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A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 



TO THE 

REV. ST. GEORGE K. HYLAND, D.D. 

" Guide, philosopher, and friend " 

September, 1915 




5%e 
JPoase 



CHARLES KOSlMSOI-^l 



A LITTLE HOUSE 
IN WAR TIME 



BY 

AGNES AND EGERTON CASTLE 

AUTHORS OF 

" THE STAR-DREAMER," " INCOMPARABLE BELLAIRS,' 

"OUR SENTIMENTAL GARDEN," ETC. 



God gave all men all earth to love, 
But, since our hearts are small, 
Ordained for each one spot should prove 

Beloved over all; 
That, as He watched Creation's birth, 
So we, in God-like mood. 
May of our love create our earth 

And see that it is good." 

Rudyard Kipling 



NEW YORK 
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 

681 Fifth Avenue 
1916 






** 



Printed in Great Britain 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

A FOREWORD - - - - - vii 

I. THE VILLINO IS PINCHED - i 

II. OUR LITTLE BIT - - - - 29 

III. OUR MINISTERING ANGELS - - - -62 

IV. "CONSIDER THE LILIES" - - - 92 
V. DEATH IN THE LITTLE GARDEN - - - 119 

VI. BABIES : CHINESE AND OTHERS - - - 141 

VII. OUR GARDEN IN JUNE - - - 163 

VIII. OUR BLUE-COAT BOYS 

IX. IT'S A FAR CRY TO PERSIA - 



191 
217 



X. A THREE DAYS CHRONICLE - - - 244 



A FOREWORD 

". . . thoughts by England given ; 
Her sights and sounds ; dreams happy as her day ; 
And laughter learnt of friends ; and gentleness, 
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven." 

Rupert Brooke. 

A little chronicle of a great time may have an 
interest of its own quite incommensurate from 
its intrinsic worth. These pages do not pretend 
to any merit beyond faithfulness ; but they are 
the true record of the everyday life of an average 
family during the first year of the war of wars ; 
what we have felt, what we have seen; the 
great anxieties ; the trivial incidents and emo- 
tions which have been shared by thousands of 
our fellow-countrymen. This home has been so 
far exceptional that it has had few hostages to 
give to fortune, and that it has mercifully been 
spared the supreme sacrifice demanded with 
such tragic universality, and given with such a 
glorious resignation : but, infinitesimal pulse, it 
has beaten with the great arteries, the whole 
mighty heart of the British Empire. 

Annals enough there are, and will be, of the 
vii 



A FOREWORD 

soul-stirring events of 1914 : the proud rise of 
the nation, its struggles, its failures, its appalling 
blunders, and the super-heroism that has saved 
the consequences. If Armageddon be not the 
end of the world ; if there be generations coming 
after to carry the sheaves of that seed sown with 
blood and tears to-day, there will be no dearth 
of evidence to enable our children's children to 
feed upon the story of England's glory. They 
will be able to read and learn and look back, out 
of the peace won for them, to examples almost 
beyond the conception of idealism. Should, by 
some freak of chance, this humble book survive, 
it may not then be without an interest of its own. 

This was how the quiet stay-at-home family 
felt and thought in the days of the titanic 
conflict ; these were the little things that hap- 
pened in a little country house. No great moral 
lesson certainly, no revelation of out-of-the-way 
philosophy ; just the way we hoped and feared ; 
the way we still laughed and talked, gardened 
and worked, the way we were led on from day 
to day and made to find, after all, what seemed 
unbearable, bearable, brought to see light where 
there was apparently no issue. 

Being, as we say — so far — singularly un- 
viii 



A FOREWORD 

stricken in the midst of so much mourning, we 
have been able to enjoy the lighter side of 
existence, the humours, the quaintnesses, which 
relieve, blessedly for poor humanity, the most 
complicated and the most desperate situations. 
Perhaps, therefore, these random jottings, 
turned, many of them, to the lighter side of 
life, may, in some stray hour of relaxation, 
amuse here and there one actively engaged in 
the stern actions which the time demands. 
Perhaps the breath of the garden may be 
grateful to a mind upon which the wind from 
the trenches has blown so long. 

There is a great deal of laughter about our 
country, even now. The troops go singing 
down the roads in the early dawn, and come 
tramping back to camp, with tired feet, but with 
joking tongues, after the long days. We know 
there is much laughter in the fighting-line ; 
innocent, childish pleasantries, catchwords that 
run with grins from lip to lip. There is no 
laughter so genuine as that which springs from 
a good conscience. And so there is laughter in 
the hospitals also, thank God ! 

We trust our pages may add a little mirth 
more to the gallant spirit abroad ; beguile the 



A FOREWORD 

fancy of one wounded man, or the oppression of 
one anxious heart. Then, indeed, they will not 
have been written in vain. 

Would only that through them we could 
convey an impression of the surroundings in 
which we write ; would we could bring our 
readers the atmosphere of these Surrey heights ; 
of the rolling moorland, of the winds, sweet with 
heather, aromatic with the pine-woods, charged 
with the garden scents that blow about us; then 
truly would they find refreshment ! Would we 
could show them our terraced borders where 
now the roses are breaking into wonderful 
bloom, pink, crimson, cream, fire-carmine, and 
yellow ; where the delphiniums are arrayed, 
noble phalanxes in every shade of enamel blue 
and purple — spires marshalled together like 
some fantastic cathedral town, viewed in im- 
possible moonlight, out of a Dore dream ; where 
the canterbury bells are beginning to shake out 
their cups, tinted like the colours in a child's 
paint-box ; and the campanulas, with their tones 
of mountain wildness — of snow and blue distance 
— bring coolness into the hotter tints of the 
border. 

We look down on this July richness from the 



A FOREWORD 

small white house with its green blinds, which, 
though compact, round-windowed, comfortably 
Georgian, has yet an absurd Italian look. 

On the upper terrace wall the ornamental 
pots, each with its little golden cypress, begin 
to foam with lobelia and creeping geranium ; 
between two clumps of cypress-trees, Verocchio's 
little smiling boy grips his fish against a tangle 
of blush rambler. And that's a bit of Italy for 
you, even with the ultimate vision of wild moor ! 

The terraces run down the hill, tier below 
tier. On the other side of the valley the woods 
rise between the shouldering heather-clad hills, 
to the east ; the wide, long view spreads to the 
south-west, where the hills begin to lift again, 
and distant pine-woods march across the sky. 

Would we could but give to mere words the 
sense of altitude, of great horizons which our 
high-perched position gives us ! 

" You're in a kind of eyrie," says one visitor. 
And another : " Oh, I do like all this sky ! It's 
so seldom one really gets the sky about one." 

11 You have," said an exile — an old Belgian 
religious — after tottering solemnly along the 
terrace walk, "you have here an earthly para- 
dise. A spot God has wonderfully blessed." 

xi 



A FOREWORD 

Besides the startling contrasts and the fairness 
of its prospect, the little place has a special 
charm of its own, which is not possible to 
describe, yet which everyone feels who comes 
within its precincts. We quite wait for the 
phrase now, upon the lips of guests under the 
red-tiled roof: "It's so extraordinarily peaceful." 

Peace ! Peace in the midst of the boom of the 
war tocsin, echoing all round ! Peace, in spite 
of the newspapers, the letters, the rumours, the 
perpetual coming and going of troops, the 
distant reverberations of gun practice, the never- 
relaxing grip of apprehension ! Yes, in spite of 
all the world being at war — there is peace in the 
Villino. 

Some of us believe it wells out from a little 
chamber, where, before the golden shrine, the 
Donatello angels hold up never-extinguished 
lamps. Or a visitor may say wonderingly : " I 
think it must be because you're all so united." 
Or, perhaps, as the old monk had it, there is an 
emanation from the place itself: so beautiful a 
spot of God's earth, so high up, so apart between 
the moor and the valley ! Whatever the reason, 
we wish that some of the peace that lingers here 
may reach out from these pages, and touch with 

xii 



A FOREWORD 

serenity any unquiet heart or restless spirit that 
comes their way. 

And since the soldiers we have written about 
wanted toys, like sick children, their mascot to 
hug — here comes a procession of our little fur 
folk walking vividly before your mental eye. 

Here is Loki, the first and oldest of the pets. 
Loki, growing grey about the muzzle, elderly 
already by reason of his six years of life ; with 
his immense coat, tawny, tufted, plumed, fringed ; 
with his consequential gait ; his " quangley " 
ways : so easily offended, in his own strong 
sense of dignity; with his over-loving heart; 
his half-human, half-lion eyes; Loki, with his 
clockwork regularity of habit ; his disdainful 
oblivion, except on certain rare occasions, of the 
smaller fur fry ; Loki, making windmill paws to 
the Master of the Villino, till he has succeeded 
in dragging him away from his pipe and his 
arm-chair for a walk on the moors ; or yet franti- 
cally and mutely imploring the mystified visitor 
to go away and cease from boring him. 

And here is Mimosa, the most Chinese of 
little ladies, hued like a ripe chestnut, with dark 
orbs so immense and protuberant as almost to 
seem to justify the legend that Pekinese will 

xiii 



A FOREWORD 

drop their eyes about if you don't take care. 
Very sleek and sinuous and small is she, a 
creature of moods and freaks, fastidious to the 
point of never accepting a meal with the other 
dogs ; with all kinds of tricksy, pretty ways of 
play, shrilly barking and dancing for bread pills, 
which she will fling in the air and catch again, 
throw over her shoulder and waltz round to 
pounce upon, more like a kitten than a little dog. 

And the puppy, Loki's own contemned daugh- 
ter, the colour of a young lion cub— the puppy, 
with her irrepressible enthusiasms, her unsnub- 
bable demonstrations, her " pretty paws," her 
coal-black muzzle, her innocent countenance — 
" Plain Eliza" — whose heart, like her father's, is 
so much too big and tender and faithful, that 
happening the other day to see, over the garden 
hedge, a member of the family in whose house 
she was born, she rent the air with such shrieks 
of ecstasy that the whole Villino establishment 
rushed to the spot, thinking she was being 
murdered. 

Then there is Arabella, the lavrock setter. 
" Perverse, precise, unseasonable Pamela," cries 
Mr. B. in Richardson's celebrated novel, when 
having pursued the virtuous damsel to her last 

xiv 



A FOREWORD 

refuge, she not unnaturally misunderstands the 
purport of his next advance. 

When she does understand she exclaims : 
11 Mr. B. is the noblest of men, he has offered me 
marriage." 

To come back to Arabella. We wish we could 
find a union of epithets as telling as that of 
Mr. B. in the exasperation of his conscious 
rectitude. Inane, inert, inconvenient Arabella, 
fairly well describes our sentiments towards her. 
She is a bore and a burden. She feels the heat 
and goes out and takes mud-baths, and comes in 
and shakes herself in the drawing-room. She 
cannot understand why she should not lie in our 
laps as well as the puppies. She howls mourn- 
fully outside the kitchen door unless she is 
invited in to assist in the cooking. She has 
destroyed three arm-chair covers in the servants' 
hall, preferring that resting-place to her basket. 
11 Fond " is the word that might best be used to 
qualify our feelings towards her. We don't 
know what to do with her, but we should not 
like to be without her. 

Then there is the black Persian, " Bunny," our 
kind dead Adam's cat. You will meet him 
circling round the garden. He will raise his 

XV 



A FOREWORD 

huge bushy tail when he sees you, and fix his 
inscrutable amber eyes upon you, questioningly. 
Then he will pass on with a soundless mew. 
He is looking for his master, and you can watch 
him slink away, superb, stealthy, pursuing his 
fruitless quest. 

The fur children come first, being the Villino's 
own family, but there are other kinds with us 
now. The little Belgians run about the paths 
calling to each other with their quaint pattering 
intonation, so that long before you hear the 
words you know by the sound of the voices 
coming up the hill that these are the small exiles. 
Brown-haired Marthe, with her childish ways 
and her serious mind, her ripe southern-tinted 
face, and Philippe, with his shock of fine hair, 
hazel-colour, cut medieval fashion, and his little 
throat, which bears his odd picturesque head as 
a flower-stem its bloom. And sturdy Viviane, 
stumping up with her solemn air, precisely 
naming the flowers as she comes : 

" Sweet Will-li-yam ! Del-phi-ni-um! Canterry 
bells !" 

Soon Thierry, the schoolboy, will be here- 
too. The garden is full of Easter holiday 
memories of him ; a little perspiring boy, squar- 

xvi 



A FOREWORD 

ing a tree-trunk with boxing-gloves five times too 
large for him, under the grand-paternal tuition 
of the Master of the Villino. It would have been 
difficult to say who was the more pleased, child 
or man. And Thierry can box with a right good 
will ; a very excellent little boy this, with a 
bursting patriot's heart under his shy, reserved 
ways. No doubt he fancied he was hitting a 
German with each of those well-directed blows. 

It is nice to have the children about the Villino ; 
and that they are exiles adds pathos to the sound 
of their happy laughter in our ears, and a tender- 
ness to the pleasure with which our eyes watch 
their unconscious gaiety. 

Perhaps, however, if anyone wanted to have a 
really poetic impression of our little house, they 
should see it by moonlight, or — which, of course, 
nobody does except by accident — in the summer 
dawn. Whether it is because of an unconscious 
appreciation of the limits of our own intellect, or 
whether from some inherent vulgarity, human 
nature is prone to depreciate all that is laid out 
very plainly before it. We demand mystery in 
everything if it is to mean beauty to us. 

Some such idea as this Mr. Bernard Shaw 
expresses — in one of his uncanny leaps of the 

xvii 



A FOREWORD 

spirit out of his own destructive philosophy — 
when he makes the Christian martyr retort to 
the Pagan who accuses her of not understanding 
her God : " He wouldn't be my God if I could !" 

To pass from the infinite to the atom: when 
the Villino garden and its prospects are but 
imperfectly revealed on a moonlight night the 
view, with mystery added to its fairness, becomes 
wonderful in its loveliness. 

On such a night as this the valley holds mist 
in its bosom, and the distant moor ridges in 
their pine-woods might be the Alps, for the air 
of distance they assume, the remote dignity 
with which they withdraw themselves, pale and 
ethereal, into the serene sky. It may be the 
moon is rising over the great wooded hill in 
front of the Villino. The white radiance pours 
full upon us. We know all that is revealed, and 
yet all is different. Each familiar object has a 
strange and transfigured face. The little cypress- 
trees, rimmed in silver, cast black shadows on 
the grass, silver-cobwebbed. The great moors 
are exquisite ghost wildernesses, their hollows 
full of cloudy secrets. And you can hear the 
night-jar spinning out its monotonous, mys- 
terious song, a song which does not break the 

xviii 



A FOREWORD 

grand restfulness, but only accompanies it. We 
have no running streams — there is nothing 
perfect here below, it is a great want ! But the 
song of the night-jar makes up a little for the 
voice of water in the night-time. It is the hear- 
ing of some such sound, lost in the turmoil of 
day, that emphasizes the incomparable silence. 

Our heights in the sunrise show once again 
a world transfigured ; a sparkling, coloured, 
other-worldly world. 

" Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops." 

The saffrons and yellows begin to gather over 
the moors, and the crests of the hills and the 
tree-tops are tipped with light. Each flower has 
its shimmering aureole; each has taken a hue 
never seen in the garish fulness of the sunshine, 
enamel, stained-glass-window hues, difficult to 
describe. There is a curious look of life about 
everything. It is the exquisite hour of the 
earth, untroubled by man ; garden and woods, 
hill and valley, unfold their secrets to the sky 
and hold commune with the dawn-angels. There 
is a freshness, a vividness, almost a surprise 
about the world, as if all things were made new 
again. An immense difference in the scene 
xix 



A FOREWORD 

compared to the night's grave mysteries. The 
latter is a canto from the Divine Comedy as 
against Fra Angelico's dance of Paradise. And 
to this innocent joy of the waking earth you 
have the songs of the birds. Some ecstatic 
thrush, or liquid slow-chanting blackbird, will 
have begun the hymns at the first glimmer 
of dawn, and hold the world spell-bound till the 
lesser chorus spreads a tangled web of sound 
from end to end of the valley and the garden 
heights, and the moor silence is reached. 

Morning after morning of this glorious summer 
of the war, the pageant of sunrise marches, for 
those who have eyes to see, and night after 
night the mystery gathers in the moonlight. 
All England holds some such fair visions. Does 
it not seem a dream that it should be so ? The 
horror, the devastation, the noise, the fire, the 
bloodshed, the agony, the struggle, only a couple 
oi hundred miles away, are they the only reali- 
ties in this red year ? To us in England's heart, 
still mercifully unwounded, these sometimes 
seem the dream, the dream of evil, and our 
peace the reality. 

Dream, or reality, it is our peace we want to 
bring to you. 

xx 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN 
WAR TIME 

i 

THE VILLINO IS PINCHED 

" Prepare, prepare the iron helm of war, 
Bring forth the lots, cast in the spacious orb ; 
The Angel of Fate turns them with mighty hands, 
And casts them out upon the darkened earth ! 
Prepare, prepare !" 

W. Blake, 

The most usual remark that people make after 
a visit to our little house on the hill is this : 
" How peaceful !" 

Even in the ordinary course of life — those 
times that now seem extraordinary to a world 
already accustomed to the universal struggle — 
when everyone in England was in peace, except 
where their own unquiet spirits may have 
marred it, even then this nest of ours seemed 
peace within peace. We do not know now 
whether the contrast is not the more acute. 
One of the thousands of homes dedicated to 
the quiet joys and innocencies of life, where no 
one ever wanted to quarrel, because all found 
the hours so full of sweet content, we do not 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

flatter ourselves that we are singular : only 
typical. The shadow of the great cloud cast 
at first a hideous, unnatural darkness over our 
harmless ways. 

All during the long golden summer, when 
we looked out across the moor basking in the 
radiance ; when our roses bloomed and the 
garden rioted in colour, and the valley slowly 
turned from green to russet ; when the harvest- 
moon went up like a huge brass platter in 
silver skies, the very beauty of it all clutched 
one's heart the fiercer. How fares it with our 
boys over there in the heat and the stress ? 
How much worse it must be for them that the 
sun should blaze upon them, marching, firing, 
rushing forward, lying wounded, wanting 
water ! . . . Oh, dear lads of England, how we 
at home agonized with you! 

The little house, bought in a light-hearted 
hour, furnished with infinite zest in happy 
days out of distant Rome, was a sort of toy 
to us from the beginning; and kind friends 
surveyed it with indulgent and amused, yet 
admiring, glances, such as one would bestow 
upon an ingenious and pretty plaything. We 
called it the Villino, partly in memory of the 



THE VILLINO IS PINCHED 

Italian sojourn, and partly because, though it 
is bounded by wild moors, it contrives a 
quaintly Italianate air. It stands boldly on 
the lip of the hill, and the garden runs down 
in terraces to a deep valley. Across the valley 
to the east the moors roll, curve upon curve. 
South, facing us, the trees begin their march ; 
and westward the valley spreads, rising into 
moors again, where again the fir-trees sentinel 
the sky. The view from the terrace rather 
takes your breath away. It is unexpected and 
odd, and unlike anything, except Italy and 
Scotland mixed : the wildness, and the trim 
terraced garden with its calculated groups of 
cypress, its vases brimming with flowers, its 
stone steps, its secret bowery corners. 

u Mount Ecstasy " an artist friend has dubbed 
it. " Is it possible," she asked us in the middle 
of this radiant October of the war, "that the 
wind ever blows here? Do you ever hear it 
shrieking round the house ?" 

We gave her a vivid description of what the 
wind could do when it liked ; when it came up 
the valley with the rain on its wings. She 
looked incredulous. 

" Is it possible ?" she repeated softly 
3 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

She had come straight from the great camp 
at Lyndhurst, where the 7th Division, gallant 
as ill-fated, had gathered in all its lusty strength 
before embarking for the bloody struggle in 
Flanders. She had just said good-bye to her 
eldest son; the call of the bugle, the march 
of thousands in unison, was in her ears ; the 
vision of the crowded transport vivid in her 
mind. Yet here she would not believe that 
even the winds could break our peace. 

This was very much what we felt ourselves 
when the Storm burst ; it was incredible with 
this placidity all about us. 

One tries to think what it would be had the 
Villino sprung to life in Belgian soil, or did the 
Hun succeed in landing, and come pouring, a 
noxious tide, across our country roads, taking 
the poor little place on its way. The first 
refugee from that heroic and devastated land 
who found shelter here was very smiling and 
brave until she came out into the garden. 
Then she began to cry. 

" I had such pretty flowers too." 

All our moors are turning into camps ; they 
grew like mushrooms in a day, it seems. We 
hear the soldiers marching by in the dead of 

4 



THE VILLINO IS PINCHED 

the night, singing, poor boys ! to give them- 
selves heart — such nights, too, as they are this 
autumn, deluged with rain and blown through 
with relentless wind ! We stand between two 
hospitals ; and Belgian refugees overflow in 
the villages. We read of the bombardment 
of the coast and the dropping of bombs, and 
yet we do not realize. We still feel as in a 
nightmare from which we must wake up. 

Yet the effects of war are beginning to 
stamp themselves, even in the Villino and in 
its garden. We are, some of us, naturally 
inclined to luxuries. The mistress of the 
Villino is certainly a spendthrift where bulbs 
and tubers and seeds are concerned ; and for 
three out of the four years since she owned 
the little property, the spring garden has justi- 
fied impenitence. Oh ! the crocuses running 
through the grass of that third terrace called 
the Hemicycle ! Oh ! the scyllas making minia- 
ture skies under the almond-trees ! Oh ! the 
tulips swaying jewel chalices over the mists of 
blue forget-me-not : glories of the past, this 
coming spring, how shall the garden miss you ! 

It must be explained that our soil — green- 
sand — our position — high-perched — our general 

5 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

tendency — sloping down-hill — make us charm- 
ingly dry and healthy, but disagree with the 
bulb. It is impossible to naturalize anything less 
hardy than the daffodil. The snowdrop declines 
to live with us. Therefore our autumn bulb 
lists were copious and varied, and the results 
ephemeral and lovely. This year there has 
been no bulb list ; who could think of this 
completely personal and selfish gratification 
when it is the flower of our manhood that is 
being mown down out yonder ? when all that 
can be spared must be spared to help ! There 
is so little one can do, and so appallingly much 
to be done. 

And inside, too, we are being pinched ; not 
badly, not cruelly, but just as if the war monster 
had reached out one of its myriad hands — quite 
a small and rather weak one — and had hold of 
us, enough to nip, not to strangle. 

It will not surprise any garden owner to 
learn that this is the year of all others in which 
Adam, the Villino gardener, had an "accident" 
with the cuttings, and that therefore those 
bushes of chrysanthemums, which look so well 
on our grey and orange landings, have not 
been forthcoming. Another year it would not 

6 



THE VILLINO IS PINCHED 

have mattered. We should have gaily re- 
plenished the Italian pots from the local nur- 
sery, where chrysanthemums are a speciality. 
But as it is — we go without. 

In a hundred other items the nipping fingers 
produce the same paralyzing result. The 
footman, who, we regret to say, gibbered at 
the thought of enlisting, and avowed to a horri- 
fied kitchen circle that he might perhaps be 
able to help to carry a wounded man, but face 
a bullet — " Never, never!" — found his post un- 
tenable in a household chiefly composed of the 
fair and patriotic sex. We conceived that the 
times demanded of us to bring the garden-boy 
into the house, thus reducing our establishment 
without inflicting hardship. 

Such, however,' was not the opinion of 
Juvenal, our eccentric butler. This strange 
being, from certain aspects of his character, 
might have been, as the Italian prelate said of 
a distinguished Jesuit preacher, "born in a 
volcano." He is devoted to the dogs, and has 
a genius for settling flowers ; and he has be- 
come altogether so much a part of the establish- 
ment — the famiglia — that the Villino would lose 
half its charm without him. Nevertheless, he 

7 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

is volcanic ! And though at first he took the 
substitution of four-foot in buttons for six-foot 
in livery with an angelic resignation, Vesuvius 
broke forth with unparalleled vigour and fre- 
quency after a couple of weeks of the regimen. 
Unfortunately, Juvenal is not sustained by 
patriotic ardour. He deliberately avoids afflict- 
ing himself with thoughts about the war. " I 
never could bear, miss, to see anything that 
was hurt ! And as for anything dying, miss, 
even if it was only a little animal — why, there, I 
couldn't as much as look at my poor old father !" 
Here is his point of view as expressed tersely 
to the Signorina of the Villino. 

This being the case, he succeeds so thoroughly 
in blocking his mind against all facts connected 
with war time (except the entertaining of " a 
nice young fellow from the camp ") that he has 
found himself injured to the core by our at- 
tempts at economy. And when it came to our 
unexpectedly inviting a refugee lady into his 
dining-room, and his having to lay three extra 
places for her and her children, the lava over- 
flowed into the upper regions. We with diffi- 
culty extricated "Miss Marie" from the burning- 
flood. 

8 



THE VILLINO IS PINCHED 

We are all slightly overwrought these days, 
and instead of pretending not to notice, which 
is the only possible way where Juvenal is con- 
cerned, we suggested that he should look for 
another situation. It would be difficult to say 
whether outraged feeling or amazement pre- 
dominated in him. Of course, we all deeply 
repented our hasty action, and then ensued 
four uncomfortable weeks of cross purposes in 
which neither side would "give in." Finally 
the poor volcano departed in floods of tears, 
with twenty-four bird-cages and a Highland 
terrier. 

14 Don't you take on, Mr. Juvenal," said Mrs. 
MacComfort, the cook ; 44 you'll be back in no 
time!" 

There ensued a dreadful interlude with an 
anaemic young butler unfit for military service, 
who promptly developed toothache and a 
bilious attack, and whom all the servants re- 
garded as a spy for the convincing reasons that 
he sat and rolled his eyes and said nothing. 

He was, however, non-volcanic, and placidly 
accepted Jimmy, the promoted garden-boy. 
This was not reciprocal, for Jimmy, who dis- 
played a degree of conscientiousness, peculiar 

9 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

indeed in the light of after-events, could not 
reconcile himself to the change. 

He would canter heavily, smothered to the 
chin in six-foot's pantry apron, into the drawing- 
room to announce with a burst of tears to the 
young housekeeper : 

" Please, miss, 'e won't suit ! 'E won't do 
nuthin' I tell him ! Oh, please, miss, he's putting 
the cups — the mistress's own cup — in the wrong 
cupboard, and" — with a howl — "he ain't washed 
it, miss ! And when I tell him, 'e says it doesn't 
matter !" 

We didn't think he would suit, ourselves. 
We had all said so often that Juvenal was per- 
fectly dreadful, and couldn't be endured another 
minute, and every member of the famiglia had 
so frequently declared with tears that if Mr. 
Juvenal remained she could not possibly stay ; 
she had borne it as long as she could, not to 
make unpleasantness, but 

We were unanimous now in regrets. 

" God be with poor Juvenal !" said Mrs. Mac- 
Comfort, the dear, soft-spoken Irish cook ; and 
added darkly : She wouldn't like to be saying 
what she thought of the new butler. 

However, a quelque chose malheur est bon, for 
10 



THE VILLINO IS PINCHED 

had the following incident taken place under 
Juvenal's dog-loving eye, as Juvenal himself 
subsequently remarked, there would certainly 
have been murder done. We ourselves had 
been inclined to consider Jimmy an agreeable 
member of the domestic circle. Nobody minded 
telling him to take out the dogs, no matter how 
bad the weather was, and Jimmy always re- 
sponded with that smile of cheerful alacrity 
that so endeared him. 

The tale which is here narrated may seem 
irrelevant to the share which the Villino has 
had to take in the universal and terrible cata- 
clysm, but nevertheless the incidents therein 
set forth directly issued from it ; and, in spite of 
a dash of comedy, they were tragic enough for 
those chiefly concerned, namely, the youngest 
" fur-child " and Jimmy himself. If we had not 
taken Jimmy into the house, Jimmy would not 
have been told to walk the dogs ; and if Jimmy 
had not walked the dogs, the singular drama 
of the phantom dog - stealers and the baby 
Pekinese would never have occurred. 

There were then three fur-children : Arabella, 
the Lavroch setter — lovely, dull, early Victorian, 
worthy creature ; Loki, the beloved, chief of all 

ii 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

the little dumb family, first in our affections — 
a quaint, saturnine, very Chinese little gentle- 
man, with crusty and disconcerting ways, and 
almost a human heart ; and Mimi, the heroine 
of this adventure — Mimosa on solemn occasions 
— really a beauty, with all the engaging Pekinese 
oddities and that individuality of character 
which each one seems to possess ; spoilt, im- 
perious, vivid ! 

It was a very wet day, and Jimmy had been 
ordered to don his master's mackintosh cape 
and take the fur-children up the moor. The 
first peculiar incident was that Mimi ran three 
times headlong from his guardianship. As fast 
as she was coaxed down one stairs she was up 
the other, with her tail between her legs. It 
might have made us pause, but it didn't. We 
said : " Poor Mimi doesn't like getting her feet 
wet." Anyone who had heard the boy cooing 
to his charges in tones of the most dulcet affec- 
tion would have been as dense as we were. 

That evening the dark adventure took place. 
Jimmy came running into the kitchen, more 
incredibly mud - encrusted than any living 
creature outside an alligator is ever likely to 
be again; and, bursting into loud wails, declared 

12 



[THE VILLINO IS PINCHED 

that he had been set upon by two men and 
robbed of Mimi. 

"Run, run," cried Mrs. MacComfort, "and 
tell the master !" 

Jimmy ran, working himself up as he went, 
so that it was what our Irish nurse used to call 
" roaring and bawling " that he rushed into the 
library and poured out his dreadful news. The 
master dashed in pursuit of the miscreants, led 
by the hero, who cantered him uphill a good 
half-mile. He was followed by the cook and 
her Cinderella, valiantly brandishing sticks. 
Having reached the post-office, the chase was 
given up, and the master of the Villino was 
returning dejectedly when a yapping behind 
the hedge that skirted the road was recognized 
by Mrs. MacComfort as umistakably Mimi's 
voice. 

Mimi was extracted, none the worse for her 
emotions, but with the remnants of a torn 
pocket-handkerchief tied round her neck. 

Whether it was the abnormal layers of mud 
on Jimmy's countenance ; or the curious fact 
that, in spite of the horrible treatment which 
he vowed had been inflicted upon him in a 
hand-to-hand struggle with two men, under the 

13 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

mud there was not a scratch upon his ingenious 
countenance ; or whether it was that, although 
the conflict was supposed to have taken place 
within our own courtyard, no sound reached 
anyone in the house — there and then Jimmy's 
master came to this conclusion : "I believe he's 
made it all up." But he didn't say so. The 
boy was only cross-examined. 

"Why didn't you shout?" asked Mrs. 
MacComfort. 

" I couldn't. They stuffed something soft 
into my throat — a handkerchief, I think it was." 

"Where did you get all that mud?" asked 
the gardener next morning. " You never 
picked that up in here. You couldn't, not if 
you'd scraped the ground." 

It was then that Jimmy discovered that the 
assault had taken place outside the gates. 

Jimmy's mistress questioned him next, and 
she instantly saw that he was lying. To point 
the moral and adorn the tale she sent for the 
policeman. 

" Why didn't you 'oiler ?" said the policeman. 

Jimmy's knees shook together. 

" I couldn't 'oiler," he maintained doggedly. 
" They'd stuffed something down me throat." 



THE VILLINO IS PINCHED 

"Oh, indeed !" said the policeman. " Maybe 
it was this 'ankercher, was it ?" 

He produced a dreadful rag that had been 
picked up on the road. It fitted neatly with 
the other rag that had been round Mimi's neck : 
awful pieces de conviction I 

" I say it's your ankercher. Don't go for to 
deny it. I say it's your ankercher ; I 'appen to 
know it's your ankercher. I say you did it all 
yerself!" " 

When a six-foot, black-moustached police- 
man, with boring eye, rolls out such an accusa- 
tion in tremendous crescendo, what can a little 
criminal do but collapse ? Jimmy collapsed. 
It was his ankercher. He 'ad done it. There 
never 'ad been no men. He never 'ad been 
knocked down. He 'ad rolled in the mud on 
purpose, in the ditch where it was thickest. 
He 'ad tried to 'urt Mimi. 

" Why ?— why ?— why ?" 

Even our local Sherlock Holmes couldn't 
extract anything like a plausible reason. Loki's 
mistress had to piece one together for herself. 

Jimmy hadn't liked taking the dogs out on a 
wet day. He had therefore planned to strangle 
Mimi and throw her over the hedge, believing 

J 5 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

that if he showed himself unable to protect the 
dogs he would not be sent out with them any 
more. 

The two immediate results of this event, 
extraordinary indeed in the annals of the 
Villino, where a St. Francis-like love of our 
little fur and feather brothers and sisters 
dominates, was the prompt restoration of 
Jimmy to the arms of Mrs. Mutton, his washer- 
woman mamma, and the summoning of Juvenal 
to the telephone. He was staying with his 
brother, a postmaster. We communicated the 
awful attempt. Juvenal averred, on the other 
side of the wire, that you could have knocked 
him down with a feather. Having thus re- 
established communications, we wrote, and, 
tactfully cloaking our own undignified yearn- 
ings with the innocence of the fur-children, we 
told him that the dogs missed him very much. 
He was swift to seize the " paw of friendship," 
and, following our artful lead, responded by 
return of post that Betty had been "that 
fretted," he did not know what to do with her 
— " wine she did from morning till night !" 

It was obvious that anyone with a grain of 
decent feeling must instantly remedy such a 

16 



THE VILLINO IS PINCHED 

state of affairs. Juvenal returned with the 
twenty-four bird-cages and Betty the terrier. 

We have compounded with an assistant 
parlourmaid; it is by no means an economy, 
but four-foot in buttons is in such demand that 
Jimmy is irreplaceable. 

After all, so little has that war-pinch nipped 
us, that, if it was not to laugh at them, one 
would be ashamed to set these infinitesimal 
bruises down at all. And, thank God ! now one 
can laugh a little again ; the days are gone by 
when it seemed as if every small natural joy 
had been squeezed out of life, that existence 
itself was one long nightmare of apprehension. 

We do not yet know what the future may 
have in store for us; but, pray heaven, those 
mornings may never dawn again when one 
could scarcely open the paper for the beating 
of one's heart. 

It is not, we hope, that we are accustomed to 
agony, though no doubt there is something of 
habit that takes the edge off suspense and grief. 
We are also better prepared ; we have got, as 
it were, into our second wind, and we are, after 
our English fashion, perhaps even a little more 
determined than we were to start with. When 

17 c 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

it all began, with what seemed merely an in- 
sensate crime in a half-civilized country, no one 
would have thought that England, much less 
our little house, would be affected. Though, 
indeed, personally, the murder of the Arch- 
duchess touched the mistress of the Villino a 
little more nearly than most, for as children 
they had played together. It was, and is, a 
very vivid memory. 

She and her sisters had been brought to 
Brussels for their education, and Sophie was 
one of the youngest, if not the last, in the 
nursery of the Austro-Hungarian Legation in 
that city. The Chotek family used to come 
to the pare; a tribe of quaint, fair-haired 
children. They wore short black velvet coats 
and caps, and plaid skirts, rather long. The 
Signora can see little Sophie before her now ; 
a Botticelli angel, with an aureole of fair curls, 
silver-gold, standing out all round her small, 
pale, delicate face ; a serious child, with lustrous 
eyes and immense black lashes, and a fine, 
curling mouth. She thought her lovely and 
longed to cuddle her, with the maternal instinct 
early developed. 

" Have you much sister ?" said the tiny 
18 



THE VILLINO IS PINCHED 

Austrian, addressing her English friend upon 
their introduction with great solemnity. 

Who could have thought what a destiny lay 
before her, and in what a supreme act of self- 
devotion the soul, already luminous in that 
frail, exquisite little envelope, was to pass 
away ? We have been told on some excellent 
authority that she was not popular in her 
anomalous position, at least in her own class. 
But her singular romance nevertheless was 
crowned by so true a married happiness that 
it can leave one in no doubt that she was 
worthy of the sacrifice made for her by the 
Imperial heir. He was — it is no uncharity to 
mention so well-known a fact — a man of bad 
life ; she was his mother's lady-in-waiting, 
appointed to that post because of destitution, 
no longer in the first freshness of her youth, 
supposed to be a person of small significance — 
one of those colourless shadows that haunt the 
chairs of the great. But she captivated the 
most important Prince in her country, barring 
the Emperor ; and, what is more, her spell never 
lost its power. To that last breath, which, 
greatly favoured in their awful tragedy, they 
drew together, they adored each other. She 

19 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

made of him a model husband, a model father, 
a man of rectitude and earnestness. They had 
children, and these were all their joy. It was 
one of the reproaches cast upon her by the 
indignant royalties of the Vienna Court that 
the Duchess of Hohenberg was so economical 
she would go down to her kitchen and see the 
things given out. If she wanted to save money, 
it was for those children, cut off from their 
natural inheritance by the cast-iron laws that 
debarred their mother from a share in her 
husband's rank. 

An invited guest at the wedding of the present 
young hereditary Archduke to the Princess Zita 
has given us a description of an incident which 
well illustrates the treatment which the non- 
royal wife of the Heir Apparent received at the 
hands of her royal relatives. When the Duchess 
of Hohenberg entered, her long, narrow train 
caught in some projecting obstacle as she 
swept up the little chapel. The place was full 
of Archdukes and Archduchesses, in their 
wedding attire. Not one of these high-born 
beings budged. Each looked straight at the 
altar, absorbed in pious prayer. The ostracized 
lady had to disengage herself as best she could, 

20 



THE VILLINO IS PINCHED 

and advance, blushing hotly, to her appointed 
place, unescorted. A few minutes after a 
belated Archduchess, entering swiftly, met 
with the same mishap. Instantly she was 
surrounted with politely assisting Hoheiten. 

The friend to whom we owe the anecdote re- 
marked that it had been " a dreadful moment," 
and that one could not help feeling sorry for the 
poor Duchess. But it is to be remarked that 
she herself— delightful, cultivated, large-minded 
creature though she was — had been among the 
stony ones, and there had even been a glint 
of pleasure in her eyes under the compassion 
as she told the story. 

Sophie was of those who are hated; but, 
after all, what did it matter? Was she not 
loved ? 

Our daughter's Hungarian godmother— a 
most fairy and entrancing lady, with all the 
spirit of her race under the appearance of a 
French Marquise— like most Magyars, cham- 
pioned the cause of one whom they intended 
to make their future Queen. She gave us a 
pretty account of the great pleasure it was 
to the common people in Vienna to watch 
their Archduke and his wife at the theatre. 

21 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

They sat in the royal box, not formally, one at 
each end, as is the etiquette, but close, so close 
that everyone knew they were holding each 
other's hands. They would look into each 
other's faces with smiles, to share the interest 
and joy of what they beheld and heard. So the 
lesser folk were fond of her, though the fine 
Court circle could not forgive. 

When she went to Berlin, the astute William 
received her with a tremendous parade of 
honour, which made him very popular with the 
Archduke, as well as with the multitude that 
espoused his cause. But it was only a hollow 
show of recognition after all — a banquet elabor- 
ately arranged with little round tables, so as to 
avoid any question of precedence under the 
cloak of the most friendly intimacy. Our 
simpler-minded court had to decline her visit 
at the Coronation on account of this same 
difficulty of precedence. Whatever might be 
done in Austria, this was insulting from 
England. " But she is of better family than 
many of your royalties," said a Bohemian 
magnate to us across the table at a dinner- 
party, his blue eyes blazing. " She is of very 
good family. She is " — tapping his capacious 

22 



THE VILLINO IS PINCHED 

shirt-front with a magnificent gesture — " she is 
related to me !" 

The petty malice of those whose prerogatives 
had been infringed pursued her to her blood- 
stained and heroic grave. To the last she was 
denied all those dignities which appertained to 
her husband's rank. Her morganatic dust 
could not be allowed to commingle with that 
of royalty in the Imperial vault. The two who 
had loved beyond etiquette were given a 
huddled and secret midnight funeral ; and 
beside the Archduke's coffin, covered with the 
insignia of his state, that of his wife was 
marked only by a pair of white kid gloves and 
a fan. 

Such a pitiful triumph of tyranny over the 
majestic dead ! Horrible juxtaposition of the 
ineptitude of pomposity and the most royal 
of consummations ! Sophie and her mate must 
have smiled upon it from their enfranchisement. 

Perhaps if the doomed pair had not yielded 
themselves to those Berlin blandishments their 
fate might have been less tragic. There are 
sinister rumours as to whose hand really fired 
the revolver. We in England to-day may well 
have come to believe that those whom the 

23 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

Kaiser most smiles upon are his chosen victims. 
The laborious grin of the crocodile to the little 
fishes is nothing to it; but England is rather a 
big mouthful. 

Already one is able to say that any death has 
been merciful which has spared an Austrian 
the sight of his country's dissolution. We are 
glad that our fairy godmother has not lived 
to have her heart torn between England, her 
adopted country, and her passionately loved 
Hungary. 

The cloud no bigger than a man's hand in 
the clear sky — shadow of the mailed fist — we 
looked at it from over here with that stirring 
of surface emotions that is scarcely unpleasant! 
How horrible ! we said. How wicked, how 
cruel ! The little bloodstained cloud ! it hung in 
horizons too far off to menace our island shores. 
We were very sorry for the old Emperor, 
pursued to the last, it seemed, by the inexplic- 
able, unremitting curse. " I have been spared 
nothing," he is reported to have said when the 
news of the Archduke's murder was broken to 
him. Was he then in his own heart sheltering 
the deadly spark that was to kindle the whole 
world ? We thought of the playmate of Brussels 

24 



THE VILLINO IS PINCHED 

days with a romantic regret, and envied her a 
little. Since one must die, what a good way it 
was to go with one's only beloved ! And then, 
in the full summer peace, the clouds suddenly 
massed themselves, darkened, and spread. 

"Austrian Ultimatum to Servia! World's 
Peace Threatened !" so read the newspaper 
headlines, like the mutter of thunder running 
from pole to pole. We saw without conviction. 
It seemed too inconceivable that such a crime 
could be committed in our century; and the 
folly of it too manifest in face of the Slav 
menace. And next came the crack and the 
lightning glare — hideous illumination over un- 
dreamt-of chasms ! 

Will any of us ever forget that Saturday to 
Monday ? War was declared on Russia ; war 
on France. Luxemburg territory was violated, 
and rumour raced from one end of England to 
the other : " We are going to stand aside ; the 
peace party is too strong ! . . . We are not bound 
by deed to France, only by an understanding. 
England means to let her honour go down on 
a quibble. . . ." 

We had guests in the house— a brother, 
retired after hard service in the army ; a slow- 

25 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

spoken, gentle-eyed man of law, who hid the 
fiercest fire of British pugnacity under this 
deliberately meek exterior. They were both 
pessimistic, the soldier angrily so in his anxiety. 
" I'll never lift my head again in England ! — I'll 
never go into a foreign country again ! I'd be 
ashamed ! — Upon my word, I'll emigrate !" 

And the other gloomily : " From my ex- 
perience of this Government, it's sure to do 
the worst possible thing. I haven't the least 
hope." 

In our own hearts we had resolved, with 
the soldier, that we would give up home and 
country. Our thoughts turned to Canada. 

The relief was proportionate to the hideous- 
ness of the doubt. What though the cloud had 
spread and spread till it reached right across 
the sky, there was brilliant sunshine over 
England — the light of honour. 

Two ardent young patriots had visited us 
unexpectedly in their car that Sunday night. 
They brought small items of consolation. They 
had been to Portsmouth. It was ready lor 
war. Fixed bayonets gleamed at every corner; 
the port was closed. Both these youths were 
full of martial plans. One was hurrying to the 

26 



THE VILLINO IS PINCHED 

London Scottish, the other northwards to put 
all affairs in order before joining too. The 
London Scottish boy obligingly kept us au 
conrant of the turn of events by telephone. 
During the length of Sir Edward Grey's speech 
perverted extracts reached us and plunged us 
into ever deeper gloom : " We are only to inter- 
vene if French ports are bombarded. . . ." 

Then at midnight on Monday the bell rang. 
11 Belgian neutrality had been violated ; general 
mobilization was ordered." It was war. And 
we slept on the tidings with a strange peace. 

Perhaps the universal feeling was most im- 
pressively voiced by a Franciscan monk, who 
said to us later (during the agonizing suspense 
between Mons and the Marne): "Nothing can 
be so bad as those days when we did not know 
what the Government would do. Whatever 
happens now, nothing can compare to that. 
Shall I ever forget how we prayed ?" 

Little Brothers of Peace and Poverty, humble, 
self-despoiled servants of the rule most rigid in 
its tenderness, clamouring at the throne of God 
for a thing of pride, a priceless possession — 
their country's honour ! Paradox can scarcely 

go further, it would seem. Yet, even before 

27 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

Mr. Chesterton pointed it out, most of us had 
long ago accepted the fact that the deeper the 
truth the more breathless the paradox. Is 
there an Englishman among us who would 
lift his voice to-day against the sacred precept : 
He that loses his life shall save it ? 



28 



II 

OUR LITTLE BIT 

" ' J'entends des paroles amies 
Que je ne comprends pas. 
Je me sens loin, bien loin, de la patrie . . . 
D'ou vient que ces voix me semblent familieres ?' 
' Mon pere, nous sommes en Angleterre.' " 

Cammaerts. 

It is frequently said in letters from the front, 
by the officer praising his men, or vice versa: 
" A dozen things are being done every day that 
deserve the Victoria Cross." But if you speak 
to one of these heroes of their own deeds, you 
will invariably get the same answer : " I just 
did my little bit." 

How immense a satisfaction it must be to 
feel you've done your little bit ! And how out 
of it are the stay-at-homes ! Yet we also have 
our part to play — infinitesimal in comparison, 
but still, we hope, of use — the minute fragment 
that may be wanted in the fitting together of 
the great jigsaw puzzle. 

Our first little bit at the Villino when we 
woke to activity after the stunning of the blow, 
was obviously to house refugees. We wrote to 

29 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

a friend prominent among the receiving com- 
mittee, and offered, as a beginning, to under- 
take twelve peasants out of the thousands of 
unfortunates flying from the face of the Hun. 
From that charming but harassed lady we re- 
ceived a grateful acceptance, announcing the 
arrival of our families that afternoon — hour to 
be fixed by telegram. We feverishly prepared 
for their reception. We were ready to shelter 
five; kind neighbours proposed to take in the 
other seven. We had a fleet of motor-cars in 
readiness, and Mrs. MacComfort, our cook, 
concocted large jars of coffee and other articles 
of food likely to be relished of the Belgian 
palate. No telegram arrived ; but to make up 
for it, our telephone rang ceaselessly with 
anxious inquiries from the assisting neigh- 
bours — inquiries which very naturally became 
rather irate as the hours went by, while we 
took upon ourselves the apologies of the guilty. 
Next day we ventured to address an inquiry 
to the harassed lady. That was Saturday. On 
Monday we received a distraught telegram : 
"Will wire hour of train." It reminded us of 
the overdriven shop-assistant in the middle of 
a seething Christmas crowd: "Will attend to 

30 



OUR LITTLE BIT 

you in a minute, madam." We[felt the desire to 
oblige ; but it left us just where we were before. 

On Wednesday an unknown Reverend 
Mother telegraphed from an unknown con- 
vent : " Are you prepared to receive two 
Belgian families five o'clock to-day ?" 

This message was supplemented by another 
from an equally unknown Canon of West- 
minster Cathedral : " Sending twelve Belgians 
to-day. Please meet four-twenty train." 

We had scarcely time to clutch our hair, for 
it was already past three, when a third despatch 
reached us, unsigned, from Hammersmith : 
"Two Belgian ladies seven children arriving 
this afternoon five-five train. Please attend 
station." 

The question was, were we to expect twelve 
or thirty-six ? 

We rang up the devoted neighbours. We 
increased our preparations for refreshment. 
We spread out all the excellent cast-off 
garments collected for the poor destitutes; 
and we "attended" at the first train. 

Before proceeding any further with the 
narration of our thrilling experiences, we may 
mention that eighteen Belgians appeared in all, 
3i 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

whom we succeeded in housing after singular 
developments ; the most unexpected people 
showing a truly Christian charity, while 
others, ostentatiously devoted to good works, 
bolted their doors and hearts upon the most 
frivolous excuse. 

A neighbour of ours, in precarious health, 
with a large family, a son lost in Germany, a 
son-in-law at the front, and an infant grand- 
child in the nursery, would, we think, have given 
every room and bed in her house to the exiles. 

14 Only, please, do let me have a poor woman 
with a baby," she said. " I'd love to have some- 
thing to play with our little Delia." 

Another, a widow lady, with a large house 
and staff of servants to match, and unlimited 
means, was horrified at the idea of admitting 
peasants anywhere within her precincts ; and as 
to a small child — " I might be having the visit 
of a grand-nephew, and he might catch some- 
thing," she declared down the telephone, in the 
tone of one who considers her reason beyond 
dispute. 

About five-thirty the Villino opened its 
portals to its first refugees. The two ladies 

32 



OUR LITTLE BIT 

with the seven children were fed, and half the 
party conveyed farther on, we undertaking a 
mother and three children, under three, and a 
sprightly little bonne. The Villino is a small 
house, and we had prepared for peasant women. 
A bachelor's room and a gay, double-bedded 
attic — it has a paper sprawling with roses and 
big windows looking across the valley — were 
what we had permanently destined for the 
sufferers. Matters were not facilitated by dis- 
covering that our guests belonged to what is 
called in their own land the high-burgherdom ; 
and that they, on their side, had been told to 
expect in us the keepers of a " family pension." 
We do not know whether the unknown 
Church dignitary, the mysterious Lady Abbess, 
or the nameless wirer from Hammersmith were 
responsible for the mistake. We do not think 
it can have been our high-minded but harassed 
friend of the Aldwych, as some six weeks later 
we received a secretarial document from that 
centre of activity, asking whether it was true 
that we had offered to receive Belgians, and if 
so: what number and what class would we 
prefer to attend to ? By that time, we may 
mention, we had been instrumental in estab- 

33 d 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

lishing about sixty of every variety in the 
environs. 

However, we had reason not to regret the 
misunderstanding which brought Madame 
Koelen under our roof. 

It was " Miss Marie," the Villino's Signorina, 
who went down to meet her, accompanied by 
those kindly neighbours. Madame Koelen 
descended from the railway-carriage in tears. 

11 Poor young thing," we said, " it is only 
natural she must be heart-broken — flying from 
her home with her poor little children !" 

The first bombardment of Antwerp had been 
the signal for a great exodus from that doomed 
city. 

" We were living in cellars, n'est-ce pas? and 
it was not good for the children, vous savez, so 
my husband said : ' You must go, vite> vite ; the 
last boats are departing.' We had not half an 
hour to pack up." 

It was a piteous enough spectacle. She had 
a little girl not three, another not two, and a 
three-months-old baby which she was nursing. 
We thought of the poor distracted husband 
and father; and the forlorn struggle on the 
crowded boat ; and the dreadful landing on un- 

34 



OUR LITTLE BIT 

known soil, herded together as they were, poor 
creatures ! like a huddled flock of sheep ; and 
our hearts bled. 

Towards evening, however, when calm settled 
down again on the astonished Villino, and 
Madame Koelen, having left her children asleep, 
was able to enjoy Mrs. MacComfort's choice 
little dinner, she became confidential to the 
young daughter of the house. She began by 
telling us that we must not imagine that because 
a name had a German sound that her husband's 
family had the remotest connection with the 
land of the Bosch. On the contrary, he was of 
Italian extraction ; descended, in fact, from no 
less a race than the Colonnas ! Having thus 
established her credentials, she embarked on 
long rambling tales of the flight, copiously 
interlaced with the name of an Italian gentle- 
man ; " a friend of my husband "; a certain Mon- 
sieur Merino. 

11 When my husband was putting us on the 
remorqueur at Flushing, we saw him standing 
on the quay, vous savez, and then he said, riest- 
ce pas : l Ah, Merino, are you going to England ? 
Then look after my wife F " 

And Monsieur Merino had been so good, 
35 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

and Monsieur Merino had amused the children, 
and Monsieur Merino was so anxious to know 
how they were established, and Monsieur 
Merino would probably come down to see for 
himself, and Monsieur Merino was so droll ! 

We are very innocent people, and we accepted 
Monsieur Merino in all good faith. We an- 
nounced ourselves as happy to receive him ; 
we were touched by his solicitude. Madame 
Koelen had surprisingly cheered, but there 
was yet a cloud upon her brow. 

" Still," she said, " I do not think it was right 
of my cousin to have accepted to dine alone 
with Monsieur Merino, and to have passed the 
night in London in the same hotel with only 
her little brother to chaperon her — a child of 
eight, riest-ce pas? — and she only eighteen, vous 
savez, and expected in Brighton." 

We quite concurred. Monsieur Merino's halo 
grew slightly paler in our eyes. Monsieur 
Merino ought not to have asked her, we said> 
with great propriety. 

Madame Koelen exploded. 

" Ah, if you had seen the way she went on 
with him on the boat ! She was all the time 
trying to have a flirt with him. Poor Monsieur 

36 



OUR LITTLE BIT 

Merino ! and God knows what blague she has 
told him, for he was never at the station to see 
us off, and he had promised to be there, n'est- 
ce pas ? Oh, I was so angry ! Cette Jeanne, she 
prevented him ! I cried all the way down in 
the train." 

Certainly she had been crying when we first 
beheld her; and we who had thought! 

Madame Koelen was a handsome, sturdy 
creature, who would have made the most 
splendid model for anyone wishing to depict 
a belle laitiere. Short, deep-chested, and broad- 
hipped, her strong, round neck supported a 
defiant head with masses of blue-black hair ; 
she had a kind of frank coarse beauty — some- 
thing the air of a young heifer, only that 
heifers have soft eyes, and her eyes, bright 
brown, were hard and opaque; something the 
air of a curious child, with a wide smile that 
displayed faultless teeth, and was full of the 
joy of life; the kind of joy the milkmaid would 
appreciate ! We could quite understand that 
Monsieur Merino should find her attractive. 

Before the next day had elapsed we began 
to understand her view of the situation also. 
Like so many other Belgian women whom we 

37 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

have known, she had been married practically 
from the convent, only to pass from one dis- 
cipline to another. The husband in high- 
burgherdom, as well as in the more exalted 
class, likes to pick out his wife on the ver}' 
threshold of the world, so that he can have 
the moulding of her unformed nature ; so that 
no possible chance can be afforded her of 
drawing her own conclusions on any subject. 
The horizon of the Belgian nouvelle-mariee is 
rigidly bound by her home, and the sole lumin- 
ary in her sky is her husband. She must bask 
on his smiles, or not at all. And if the weather 
be cloudy, she must resign herself and believe 
that rain is good for the garden of her soul. 
Presently the lesser luminaries appear in the 
nursery, and then her cup of happiness is indeed 
full ; the fuller the happier ! 

"II ne me lache pas d'une semelle /" said an 
exasperated little lady to us one day, referring 
to the devoted companionship of a typical 
husband. 

No wonder, when Monsieur Merino flashed 
across the widening horizon of Madame Koe- 
len with comet-like brilliancy, that the poor 
little woman should be thrilled and dazzled. 

38 



OUR LITTLE BIT 

When, on the morning after her arrival, the 
papers announced an intermittent bombard- 
ment of Antwerp, she screamed : " Ah, par 
exemple, it is I who am glad not to be there !" 
without the smallest show of anxiety on the 
score of the abandoned Koelen. We realized 
that, to quote again our frank and charming 
friend : " Ce n'etait pas V amour de son rnari qui 
Vetouffait!" And when she next proceeded to 
hang on to the telephone, and with many 
cackles and gurgles to hold an animated con- 
versation with the dashing Merino, we began 
to hope that that gentleman might not make 
his appearance at the Villino. 

He did, however, next day ; and, under pre- 
tence of visiting houses, carried away the 
emancipated Madame Koelen for a prolonged 
motor drive, leaving the three-months-old baby 
to scream itself into fits in the attic room up- 
stairs ; she was tied into her crib while the 
little bonne promenaded the other two in the 
garden. 

The Villino is a tender-hearted place, and 
the members of the famiglia vied with 
each other in endeavouring to assuage the 
agonies of the youngest Miss Koelen, but 

39 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

nobody could provide the consolation she re- 
quired. 

Madame Koelen and her cavaliere servente 
returned for a late tea, no whit abashed ; 
indeed, extremely pleased with themselves. 
He had a great deal to say in an assured and 
airy manner, and she hung on his words with 
her broad smile and many arch looks from 
those brilliant opaque red-brown orbs. 

Monsieur Merino was tall, quite good-looking; 
with a smooth olive face, fair hair, and eyes 
startlingly blue, in contrast to the darkness of 
his skin. He gave us a great deal of curious 
information. Summoned from Antwerp, where 
he had a vague business, he was on his way to 
join the Italian colours, but, calling on the 
Italian Ambassador in London, the latter had 
given him leave to defer his departure for 
another ten days. He was, therefore, able to 
devote his entire attention to the interests of 
Madame Koelen, which he felt would be most 
reassuring to her husband. 

We rather wondered why the Italian Am- 
bassador to the Court of St. James's should 
occupy himself with the movements of a casual 
Italian merchant en route from Antwerp; or by 

40 



OUR LITTLE BIT 

what curious intermingling of international 
diplomatic arrangements he should be able to 
give military leave to a reservist ; but we were 
too polite to ask questions. 

Monsieur Merino departed with many bows 
and scrapes and hand-shakes ; and Madame 
Koelen evidently found that existence by 
comet light was worth having. 

In the course of the evening she was very 
communicative on the subject of this gentleman, 
and several anecdotes of his drollery on board 
ship were imparted to us. She had found out 
that he was married — that was a funny thing, 
fCest-ce pas ? She had always heard of him 
about Antwerp as a bachelor. 

14 We thought he was a friend of your hus 
band's," we faltered. 

" Oh, a friend — a coffee-house acquaintance, 
tout au plus / . . . 

" It was very droll. It came about this way. 
He was playing with little Maddy, and I said 
to him : ' Oh ! the good Papa that you will 
make when you marry.' Judge of my astonish- 
ment when he looks at me and says : ' I am 
married already ! Yes,' he said, ' I am married, 
and my wife lives at Sorrento ; I see her once 

4i 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

in six weeks when I make my voyage of 
business, fai des idees sur le manage, HI dit, 
comme ca." 

These ideas she next began to develop. 

" ' I do not think one ought to be bound,' he 
says. ' Do you not agree with me, Madame, a 
man ought to be free ?' Oh, he was comic !" 

11 But," we said, "we do not think that is at 
all nice." The Villino is very moral. Its 
shocked atmosphere instantly made itself felt 
on Madame Koelen. Her bright eye became 
evasive. 

" Of course I made him la lecon at once. Ah ! 
I very well made him understand I do not 
approve of these facons. My husband teases 
me ; I am so serious, so rigid I" 

Before we separated that evening she told us 
in a disengaged voice that she would spend the 
next day in London. Monsieur Merino could 
not rest, it transpired, knowing her in such 
dangerous surroundings ; so far from a station, 
in a place so likely, from its isolated inland 
position, to be the objective of the first German 
raid. He was, therefore, going to occupy him- 
self about another home for her ; and at the 

same time he would take the opportunity of 

42 



OUR LITTLE BIT 

conducting her to the Consul, for "it seems," 
she said, " that I shall have to pay a grosse 
amende if I do not go immediately in person to 
register myself in London." 

11 But the baby," we faltered. 

" Oh, the baby !" — she flicked the objection 
from her — " the baby will get on very well with 
Justine. Justine knows how to manage her." 

Justine was the minute bonne who had tied 
the infant into the cot. 

Then there was Monsieur Merino. The more 
we thought of it, the less we felt that Monsieur 
Merino was to be trusted. Luridly our 
imagination worked ; we saw ourselves left 
with three small Koelens in perpetuity ; we 
pictured that baby screaming itself into con- 
vulsions. We thought it quite probable that 
we might never hear of its Mama again. And 
poor Papa Koelen, the brave Anversois Garde 
Civique, dodging bombs in ignorance of the 
horrible happening ! 

The Master of the Villino was prevailed upon 
to speak ; in fact, to put his foot down. Next 
morning he spoke, and crushed the incipient 
elopement with a firm metaphorical tread. 

" Madame, this plan seems to be rash in the 
43 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

extreme. I cannot permit it to take place from 
under my roof. I feel, justly or unjustly, a 
mediocre confidence in Monsieur Merino. You 
will, if you please, wire to him that you are 
prevented from meeting him." 

Madame Koelen became very white, and 
though her opaque eyes flashed fury, she gave 
in instantly ; being a young Belgian wife, she 
was accustomed to yield to masculine authority. 

Again she hung on the telephone. We were 
too discreet to listen, but radiance returned to 
her countenance. 

After lunch she explained the cause. Next 
morning she and her whole family would de- 
part. Monsieur Merino would himself convey 
them to Brighton. 

The mistress of the Villino is occasionally 
troubled with an inconvenient attack of con- 
science — sometimes she wonders if it is only 
the spirit of combativeness. In this instance, 
however, she felt it her duty to warn Madame 
Koelen. 

It was a brief but thrilling conversation. 
Madame Koelen, her eldest little daughter on 
her knee, occasionally burying her handsome 
countenance in the child's soft hair, was as cool 

44 



OUR LITTLE BIT 

and determined, as silky and evasive as a lusty 
young snake. She had a parry for every state- 
ment ; that she ate up her own words and 
manifestly lied from beginning to end did not 
affect her equanimity in the least. It was the 
Signora who was nonplussed. There is nothing 
before which the average honest mind remains 
more helpless than the deliberate liar. 

Monsieur Merino was her husband's oldest 
friend. He was intimate with her whole family. 
She herself had known him for years. She 
was under his charge by her husband's wishes. 
She had probably been aware of his marriage, 
but it had merely slipped her memory — not 
having his wife w r ith him in Antwerp made one 
forget it. He was perfectly right to invite her 
young cousin to dine with him, since she had 
her brother to chaperon her. Certainly the 
brother was grown up and able to chaperon 
her ! How extraordinary of us to imagine 
anything different ! 

" You are young, and you do not know life, 
my dear," said the Signora at last, succeeding 
in keeping her temper, though with diffi- 
culty. 

Madame Koelen bit into Maddy's curls. It 
45 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

was quite evident she meant to know life. She 
had got her chance at last, and would not let it 
escape. 

" I do not think," said the unhappy hostess, 
firing her final shot, "that your husband would 
approve." 

The wife wheeled with a sudden savage 
movement, not unlike that of a snake about to 
strike. 

"Ah, voila qui triestbien egal ! That is my own 
affair !" 

There was nothing more to be said. We 
wondered whether the Garde Civique had ever 
had such a glimpse of the real Genevieve Koelen 
as had just been revealed to us. Even to us it 
was startling. 

An extraordinary hot afternoon it turned out. 
The sun was too blazing for us to venture 
beyond the shadow of the house. We sat on 
the terrace, and Madame Koelen wandered 
restlessly up and down, biting at a rose. The 
master of the Villino suddenly appeared among 
us, all smiles. 

11 A telegram for you, Madame. I have just 
taken it down on the telephone. It is from 
your husband. He is coming here to-day." 

46 



OUR LITTLE BIT 

He was very glad ; it was the burden of 
responsibility lifted. Not so, however, Madame 
Koelen. 

11 From my husband ? How droll !" 

She snapped the sheet of paper and walked 
away, conning it over. 

We sat and watched her. 

The garden was humming with heat. The 
close-packed heliotrope beds in the Dutch 
garden under the library window were sending 
up gushes of fragrance. In the rose-beds 
opposite, the roses — " General MacArthur," 
" Gruss aus Teplitz," " Ulrich Brunner," " Bar- 
barossa" (we hope these friendly aliens will 
soon be completely degermanized), crimson 
carmine, velvet scarlet, glorious purple — seemed 
to be rimmed with gold in the sun-blaze. It 
was a faultless sky that arched our world, and 
the moor, already turning from silver amethyst 
to the ardent copper of the burnt heather, 
rolled up towards it, like a sleeping giant 
wrapped in robes of state. 

On such a day the inhabitants of the Villino 
would, in normal times, have found life very 
well worth living indeed ; basking in the sun 
and just breathing in sweetness, warmth, colour 

47 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

— aspiring beauty, if this can be called living ! 
But in war time the subconsciousness of 
calamity is ever present. Inchoate appre- 
hension of bad news from the front is massed 
at the back of one's soul's horizon, so that one 
lives, as it were, under the perpetual menace 
of the storm. 

The wonderful summer was being rent, laid 
waste, somewhere not so very far away; and 
the sun was shining, even as it was shining on 
these roses, on blood outpoured — the best blood 
of England ! In the hot Antwerp streets, we 
pictured to ourselves some tired man going to 
and fro ; the weight of the gun on his shoulder, 
the weight of his heavy heart in his breast; 
thinking of his wife and little children, hunted 
exiles in a strange country, while duty kept 
him, their natural protector, at his post in the 
fated city. 

To have seen what we read on that young 
wife's face would have been horrible at any time : 
it was peculiarly at variance with the peace of 
the golden afternoon, and the lovely harmony 
of the garden. But in view of her country's 
desolation and her husband's share in its 
splendid and hopeless defence, it was hideous. 

48 



OUR LITTLE BIT 

We do not even think she had the dignity of a 
grande passion for the fascinating Merino ; it 
was mere vanity, the greed of a pleasure-loving 
nature free to indulge itself at last. She was 
only bent on amusing herself, and the un- 
expected arrival of her husband interfered with 
the little plan. Therefore she stood looking 
at his message with a countenance of ugly 
wrath. 

11 Ah, ca, qvHil est ennuyeux / . . . What has 
taken him to follow me like this ?" 

The thoughts were printed on her face. 

11 Is it not delightful ?" said the guileless 
master of the Villino, who never can see evil 
anywhere. 

" Ah, yes, indeed," said she ; " delightful !" 

She could no more put loyalty into her tone 
than into her features. 

" Heaven help Koelen !" thought the Signora, 
and was heartily sorry for the unknown, but 
how glad, how indescribably thankful, that the 
planned expedition had been prevented ! 

Dramatically soon after his telegram Mon- 
sieur Koelen arrived — an exhausted, pathetic 
creature. He had stood twelve hours in the 
steamer because it was so packed with exiled 

49 e 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

humanity that there was not room to sit down. 
He had exactly two hours in which to see his 
wife, having to catch the night boat again from 
Harwich. He had given his word of honour 
to return to Antwerp within forty-eight hours. 

We did not, of course, witness the meeting, 
but it was a very, very piano Madame 
Koelen w T ho brought Koelen down to tea ; and 
it was a cold, steely look which his tired eyes 
fixed upon her between their reddened eyelids. 
Whether he really came to put his valuables in 
the bank, whether he was driven by some 
secret knowledge or suspicion of his wife's 
character, we shall never know 7 . We naturally 
refrained from mentioning the name of Mon- 
sieur Merino. The host deemed his responsi- 
bility sufficiently met by a single word of 
advice : 

" Madame is very young ; we hope you will 
place her with people you know." 

Monsieur Merino was mentioned, however, 
by the husband himself. It transpired Madame 
owed him money. She wished to see him 
again to pay him. 

"I will pay him," said Monsieur Koelen 
icily ; " I will call at his hotel on my way." 

5° 



OUR LITTLE BIT 

Madame's head drooped. 

" Bien, mon chert" she murmured, in a faint 
voice. 

In a turn of the hand, as they would have 
said themselves, her affairs were arranged. 
She was to go to Eastbourne, under the care 
of some elderly aunts, Monsieur Koelen 
presently announced. 

We had thought he looked like a hunted 
hare. He had that expression of mortal agony 
stamped on his face, which is often seen — more 
shame for us ! — on some poor dumb creature in 
terror for its life ; but he had still enough spirit 
in him to reduce Madame Koelen to abject 
submission. 

We could see he was oppressed with melan- 
choly : that his heart was bursting over the 
children. We understood that this parting 
was perhaps worse for him than those first 
rushed farewells. 

He seemed scarcely to have arrived before 
he was gone again. The young wife must have 
had some spark of feeling left— perhaps, after 
all, under the almost savage desire for a fling 
she had a stratum of natural affection, common 
loyalty — for she wept bitterly after his depar- 

5 1 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

ture, and, that night, for the first time, came 
into the little chapel and prayed. 

We met the nurse with the children in the 
garden, just as the father was being driven 
away : a small, upright creature this, with flax- 
blue eyes and corn-coloured hair, which she 
wore in plaits tightly wound round her head. 
She did not look a day more than sixteen, but 
she had the self-possession of forty ; and 
possessed resource also, as was demonstrated 
by her dealings with Baby. 

" Monsieur is so sad. Madame is so sad, 
because of Antwerp, n'est-ce pas ?" she said to us, 
and by the sly look in those blue eyes we saw 
that she was in her mistress's confidence. 

It was true that he was sad for Antwerp ; if 
the word " sad " can be used to describe that 
bleak despair which we have noticed in so 
many Belgian men who have found shelter 
in this country. 

" It is impossible that Antwerp should hold 
out," he said to us ; " the spies and traitors 
have done their work too well. The spies are 
waiting for them inside our walls. They know 
every nook in every fort, every weak spot 
better than we do ourselves." 

52 



OUR LITTLE BIT 

That was mid September, and we put his 
opinion down to a very natural pessimism. 
No one knew then of the concrete platform 
under the gay little villa outside the walls, 
built by the amiable German family who was 
so well known and respected at Antwerp ; and 
we have since heard, too, of the shells supplied 
by Krupp and filled with sand ; and the last 
Krupp guns made of soft iron, which crumpled 
up after the first shot. 

Alas, he was justified in his gloomy prophecy ! 
But we do not think that it was as much the 
sense of national calamity that overwhelmed 
him as the acute family anxiety. Yet, honest, 
good, severe, ugly little man — worth a hundred 
plausible, handsome, lying scamps such as 
Merino — he was a patriot before all else ! He 
would have had a very good excuse, we think, 
for delaying another twelve hours to place his 
volatile spouse in safet}^ with the elderly rela- 
tions at Eastbourne — but he had given his 
word. Had he arrived at the Villino only to 
find that she had tripped off to London, with that 
chance acquaintance of cafes, Monsieur Merino 
(to whose care he had in a distraught moment 
committed her) ; had he thereafter been assailed 

53 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WARTIME 

by the most hideous doubts ; had he believed, 
as we did, that she meant to abandon husband 
and babes at this moment of all others ; or 
had he — scarcely less agonizing surmise! — 
trembled for her, innocent and lost in London, 
the prey of a villain, we yet believe that he 
would have kept his word. 

"J'ai donne ma parole dhonneur /" 
What a horrible, tragic story it might have 
been, fit for the pen of a Maupassant ! We 
shall never cease to be thankful that it did not 
happen. That is why we are glad to have 
received Madame Koelen at the Villino. 

Our next refugees came to us quite by acci- 
dent, and then only for a meal. A home had 
already been prepared for them in the village, 
but the excellent Westminster Canon, who 
seemed to be the channel through which the 
stream of refugees was pouring to us, an- 
nounced five, and casually added a sixth at the 
last minute, with the result that the party were 
not recognized at the station. The name of 
the Villino having become unaccountably asso- 
ciated with every refugee that arrives in this 
part of the world, the Van Heysts landed 

54 



OUR LITTLE BIT 

en masse at our doors, demanded to have their 
cab paid, and walked in. 

We all happened to be out, and Juvenal, our 
eccentric butler, acquiesced. Standing on one 
leg afterwards, he explained that, being aware 
of our ways, he didn't know, he was sure, but 
what we might have meant to put them some- 
where. 

Weary, tragic creatures, we weren't sorry, 
after all, to speed them on their road ! The 
three fair-haired children were fed with bread- 
and-butter, and the young mother talked 
plaintively in broken French, while the old 
grandfather nodded his head corroboratively. 
But the father : he was like a creature cast in 
bronze — would neither eat nor speak. He sat 
staring, his chin on his hand, absorbed in the 
contemplation of outrage and disaster. 

They were from Malines. 

"And then, mademoiselle, it was all on fire, 
and the cannon were sending great bombs ; and 
we fled as quick as we could, riest-ce pas ? I with 
the littlest one in my arms, and the other two 
running beside me. For five hours we walked. 
Yes, mademoiselle, the two little girls, they 
went the whole way on foot, and that one there 

55 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

always crying, ■ Plus vite, maman ! plus vite, 
maman /' and pulling at my apron." 

The young husband sat staring. Was he 
for ever beholding his little house in flames, 
or what other vision of irredeemable misery? 
He remains inconsolable. Poor fellow ! he has 
heart disease ; he thinks he will never see his 
native land again. And there is yet another 
little one expected. Alas ! alas ! 

Of quite another calibre are the Van Sonder- 
doncks ; a very lively, cheery family this ! There 
are, of course, a grandpapa, a maiden aunt, a 
couple of cousins, as well as the bustling mater- 
familias, the quaint wizened papa, the well- 
brought-up Jeanne, who can embroider so 
nicely, and the four little pasty boys with red 
hair and eyes like black beads. They are com- 
fortably established in a very charming house 
lent by a benevolent lady, who also feeds 
them. 

On the Signorina's first visit she found 
Madame Van Sonderdonck in a violent state 
of excitement. She had received such extra- 
ordinary things in the way of provisions " de 
cette darned If mademoiselle would permit it, 

56 



OUR LITTLE BIT 

she would like to show her something — but 
something — she could not describe it ; it was 
trop singulier. " One moment, mademoiselle." 

She fled out of the room and returned with — 
a vegetable marrow ! 

She was rather disappointed to find that 
mademoiselle was intimately acquainted with 
this freak of nature, which she surveyed from 
every angle with intense suspicion and curiosity. 
Politeness kept her from expressing her real 
feelings when she was assured of its excellence 
cooked with cheese and onion and a little 
tomato in a flat dish, but her countenance ex- 
pressed very plainly that she was not going to 
risk herself or her family. 

Having failed to impress with the marrow, 
she repeated the effect with sago. She had 
eaten it raw. Naturally, having thus become 
aware of its real taste, she could not be expected 
to believe it would be palatable in any guise. 
Nevertheless, she was indulgent to our eccen- 
tricities. If anyone remembers the kind of 
amused, condescending interest that London 
society took in the pigmies, when those un- 
fortunate little creatures were on show at 
parties a few years ago, they can form some 

57 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

idea of Madame Van Sonderdonck's attitude 
of mind towards England. 

Good humour reigned in the family as we 
found it. 

Though papa Sonderdonek had a bayonet 
thrust through his neck — he had been in the 
Garde Civique — and they had already had a 
battle-royal with the Belgian family who shared 
the house, they seemed to view the whole situa 
tion as a joke. As they had routed their fellow 
refugees — the latter only spoke Flemish, Madame 
Van Sonderdonek only French, and an inter- 
preter had to be found to convey mutual abuse 
— and furthermore obtained in their place the 
sister-in-law and the two cousins, unaccountably 
left out of the batch, th^y had some substantial 
reasons for satisfaction. 

Monsieur and Madame Deens are once 
more of the heart-rending order. She, a 
pathetic creature always balanced between 
tears and smiles, with pale blue eyes under 
her braided soft brown hair, looks extra- 
ordinarily young to be the mother of two 
strapping children. He is the typical Belgian 
husband, devoted but grinding. 

58 



OUR LITTLE BIT 

Our first visit there was painful. Madame 
Deens was like a bewildered child, and the 
husband, a stalwart handsome fellow, who had 
been chief engineer on the railway at Malines, 
was torn between a very natural indignation at 
finding himself beggared after years of honest 
hard work, and bitter anxiety about his wife, 
who was in the same condition as Madame Van 
Hey st. 

He beckoned us outside the cottage to tell 
us in a tragic whisper that he had good reason 
to believe that "all, all the family of my wife," 
her father, mother, and the invalid sister, had 
been murdered by the Germans ; and their farm 
burned. 

"How can I tell her, and she as she is? It 
will kill her too ! And she keeps asking me 
and asking me! I shall have to tell her!" 

The tears rolled down his cheeks. Yet he 
was a hard man ; it galled him to the quick to 
be employed as a common labourer and receive 
only seventeen shillings a week. 

They had been given a gardener's house : 
the most charming, quaint abode. It had an 
enormous kitchen, with a raftered ceiling, and 
one long window running the whole length of 

59 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

the room, opening delightfully on the orchard. 
The walls were all snowy white. He might 
have made himself very happy in such sur- 
roundings for the months of exile, with the 
consciousness of friends about him, the know- 
ledge of safety and care for the wife in her 
coming trial, and the splendid healthy air for 
the children. But Deens was not satisfied. 

" I had just passed my examinations, riest-ce 
pas ? monsieur, madame, and had received my 
advancement, and we had just got into the 
little house I had built with my savings. Now 
it is burnt — burnt to the ground. And these 
wages, for a man like me, mademoiselle, it is 
something I cannot bring myself to. Je ne puis 
pas my f aire, savez vous." 

11 But Madame Deens is so well here, and we 
will look after her," said Mademoiselle. 

"Ah, but I could earn more money else- 
where ! I might have something to bring back 
to my own country." 

Of course he has had his way. A bustling lady 
got him into a motor factory, and he dragged 
his weeping but resistless spouse to a townlet, 
where they are lodged in one room ; where the 
only person we could think of to interest in 

60 



OUR LITTLE BIT 

their favour was the old parish priest, who 
turned out to be queer in his head, but where 
Deens is in receipt of thirty-two shillings a 
week. We are sure that what can be saved 
is being saved for the retour au pays, and mean- 
while the poor little woman's hour of trouble is 
approaching, and she must get through it as 
best she can, unbefriended. We feel anxious. 

Before she left, with many tears, she gave 
the Signorina, who had sympathized with her, 
the only gift she could contrive out of her 
destitution. It was the youngest child's little 
pair of wooden shoes ! 



61 



Ill 

OUR MINISTERING ANGELS 

" Chi poco sa, presto lo dice !" 

Wisdom of Nations. 

Of course we are not behindhand in our village 
in the Red Cross movement. 

Nearly every woman, whatever her views, 
fancies herself nowadays in the role of minis- 
tering angel. It may be doubted whether an 
existence devoted to the Tango and its con- 
comitants has been a useful preparation for a 
task which demands the extreme of self-devo- 
tion; and we have heard odd little tales of how 
a whole body of charming and distinguished 
amateurs rushed into the cellars at the whiz of 
a shell, abandoning their helpless patients ; and 
how the fair chief of a volunteer ambulance 
staff fainted at the sight of the first wounded 
man. 

Yet there may be many, even among what is 
odiously called " the smart set," who only find 
their true vocation at such a moment as this, 
when unsuspected qualities, heroic capacities 

62 



OUR MINISTERING ANGELS 

spring into life at the test. It is not enough to 
say that times of great calamity sift the good 
from the bad, the strong from the futile : they 
give the wasters in every class of life their 
chance of self- redemption — in numberless 
instances not in vain. While freely admitting, 
however, that there may be a good proportion 
of society women who are drawn to work 
among the wounded by a genuine desire to 
help, and have therefore taken care to qualify 
themselves for the task, who can deny that 
with others nursing is merely a new form of 
excitement, the last fashionable craze ? It was 
the same in the South African War. Indeed, 
the episode of the wounded soldier who put 
up a little placard with the inscription, " Much 
too ill to be nursed to-day," has, we see, been 
revived in connection with the present conflict. 
It may be taken as the classic expression of 
Tommy's feelings towards this particular form 
of attention. We do not suppose, however, 
that the case of the tender-hearted but un- 
enlightened lady who went about Johannes- 
burg feeding the enteric patients with buns 
will be allowed to repeat itself at Boulogne 
or Calais. We well remember reading her 

63 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

letter to the papers, in which she innocently 
vaunted her fatal ministrations, inveighing 
against the monstrous fashion in which "our 
poor sick soldiers" were being starved. We 
believe eleven victims of her chanty died. 

A late distinguished general had a genial 
little anecdote anent the energies of a batch 
of fair nurses who landed in Egypt during the 
last campaign. Happening to go round the 
hospital one morning shortly after their arrival, 
he saw one of these enchanting beings, clad in 
the most coquettish of nursing garbs, bending 
over a patient. 

" Wouldn't it refresh you if I were to sponge 
your face and hands, my man ?" she inquired, 
in dulcet tones. 

The patient, who was pretty bad, rolled a 
resigned but exhausted glance at her. 

" If you like, mum. It's the tenth time it's 
been done this morning!" 

Perhaps, like the war itself, everything is on 
too tremendous a scale now to permit of such 
light-hearted playing with the dread sequels of 
combat. We can no more afford to make a 
game of nursing than a game of fighting in 
this world struggle. It is possible that only 

64 



OUR MINISTERING ANGELS 

such of our mondaines as have the necessary 
knowledge and devotion are permitted to have 
charge of those precious lives, and that the 
others confine themselves to post-cards and 
coffee-stalls, and dashing little raids into the 
firing-lines with chocolates and socks. We 
trust it may be so. We confess that what we 
ourselves beheld of the local amateur Red 
Cross fills us with some misgiving. 

Of course, as has been said, being a very 
enlightened community, we were not going to 
be left behind. A special series of lectures 
was announced almost within a week of the 
declaration of war. The daughter of the house- 
hold determined to join. 

On her arrival, a little late, at the village hall, 
she was met by the secretary of the under- 
taking; a charming and capable young lady, 
looking, however, at this particular moment 
distraught to the verge of collapse. 

"Oh, do you know anything about home 
nursing? Do you think you could teach a little 
class how to take temperatures ? You could 
easily pick up what you want to learn after- 
wards, couldn't you ? There are such a lot 

of them, and they're all so, so " She sub- 

65 f 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

stituted " difficult to teach" for the word 
trembling on her lips. " Nurse Blacker doesn't 
know which way to turn." 

" Oh, I can certainly teach them to take tem- 
peratures," said the Signorina. Nurses, like 
poets, are born, not made ; and she is of those 
who have the instinct how to help. Besides 
this she has had experience. 

She was disappointed, however. She had come 
to learn, not to teach. It seemed to her, more- 
over, almost inconceivable that any female who 
had arrived at years of discretion and was of 
normal intellect should not be able to take a 
temperature ; but she swallowed her feelings, 
after the example of the secretary, and went 
briskly in to begin her task. 

She was provided with a jug of warm water, 
several thermometers, and a row of various 
women, ranging from the spinster of past sixty 
to the red-cheeked sixteen-year old daughter of 
the local vet — who ought to have known how 
to take a temperature, if it was only a dog's ! 
There were also two fluttering beribboned 
summer visitors from the neighbouring hotel ; 
these were doing the simple life, with long motor 
veils and short skirts and a general condescend- 

66 



OUR MINISTERING ANGELS 

ing enthusiasm towards our wild moorland 
scenery, which they were fond of qualifying as 
11 too sweet !" 

" Perhaps," said the secretary to the Signo- 
rina as she hurried away, " you could teach 
them to take a pulse also. They can practise 
on each other. It would be such a help." 

The Signorina felt a little shy. It did seem 
somewhat presuming for anything so young as 
she was to be instructing people who were all, 
with the exception of the vet's daughter, con- 
siderably older, and, therefore, obviously con- 
siderably richer in experience than herself. It 
added to her embarrassment that the summer 
visitors should fix two pairs of rapt eyes upon 
her with the expression of devotees listening 
to their favourite preacher. 

However, she summoned her wits and her 
courage, and gave a brief exposition of the 
mysteries of thermometer and pulse, patiently 
repeating herself, while the students took 
copious notes. Certainly there was something 
touching in this humble ardour for useful know- 
ledge. Then the thrilling moment of practice 
began. 

The spinster first monopolized the instruct- 
67 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

ress's attention. Her white hairs and her years 
entitled her to precedence. 

"Of course," she remarked, with the air of 
one whose scientific education has not been 
altogether neglected, as she balanced her ther- 
mometer over the jug, " the water won't really 
make it go up, will it, no matter how hot it is ?" 

The Signorina did not think she could have 
understood. 

" I mean," said the maiden lady, waving the 
little tube, "it's not heat that will ever make 
the thermometer go up. It's fever, isn't it ?" 

" But fever is heat," mildly asserted the 
11 home-nurse." 

" Oh no, I don't mean that" said the spinster 
loftily. " Of course, I know you're hot with 
fever ; but it's something in you, isn't it, that 
affects the thermometer ? It wouldn't go up, 
even if I put it on the stove, would it ?" 

" Put it into the jug and try," said the Signo- 
rina, who did not believe that language would 
be much use here. 

"Oh, I think," interpolated a summer guest 
who was much impressed by the spinster's 
grasp of the situation, " I'd rather try my ther- 
mometer on my cousin, please ! I think one 

68 



OUR MINISTERING ANGELS 

would learn better. It would be more like 
hospital practice, wouldn't it ?" 

The spinster turned from the jug with 
alacrity. 

" I'm sure you are right," she cried. Then 
wheeling on her neighbour : " Oh, would you 
mind?" she pleaded. 

The neighbour, a tailor-made lady with a 
walking-stick, who looked on with a twisted 
smile— we suspect she was a suffragette, pan- 
dering to the weakness of a world distracted 
from the real business of life — submitted to be 
made useful. Her smile became accentuated. 

" Shouldn't mind if it was a cigarette," she 
remarked in a deep bass, and thereafter was 
silent, while the spinster laboriously prepared 
to take two minutes on her watch. 

"Please, dear child," cried one of the motor- 
veiled ladies in her impassioned tone of interest, 
11 will you explain to me again, what is normal ? 
Fd better take it out, dear ! There's no use doing 
it wrong, is there ? You said something about 
a little red line — or is that for fever? How 
silly I am — red would be for fever, wouldn't 
it ? No ? Red is normal, darling. Oh, I do 
hope you're normal! What did you say, ninety- 

69 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

eight, point four ? I never could do arithmetic 
and I'm so stupid. My husband always says — 
doesn't he, Angela ? — ' You won't do much adding 
up, Birdie ' — he calls me ' Birdie,' — but I can 
trust you to subtract all right,' dear, naughty 
fellow ! He loves me to spend, you know, 
doesn't he, Angela ? Oh dear, it hasn't moved 
at all ! Is that very bad ? Angela, darling /" 

"But you didn't leave it in two minutes," 
said the persevering teacher. " Supposing you 
were to put it in your mouth now, and your 
cousin were to take you ?" 

"Will you, Angela?" The summer visitor's 
eyes became pathetic. " I'm sure I've been 
feeling quite dreadful with all this anxiety." 

" Your temperature," said the spinster tri- 
umphantly to the suffragette, "is a hundred 
and twenty-eight." 

The Signorina started. 

" But that's quite impossible ! Look here, let 
me show you. It won't mark over a hundred 
and ten." 

For the first time the spinster was flus- 
tered. 

" Oh, perhaps I read it wrong ! Let me look 
again." 

70 



OUR MINISTERING ANGELS 

After much fumbling and peering she became 
apologetic. 

"I see I did make a mistake. It's twenty- 
six." 

" Perhaps," said the little lecturer hope- 
lessly, " if I just went over the readings of the 
thermometer with you all once more " 

But she was interrupted. 

" Would you mind " — the harassed secretary 
seized her by the elbow — " would you mind 
coming to superintend the bed-making? I've 
got to take the bandage class, and Nurse 
Blacker can't really manage more than twenty 
with the compresses." 

The whole room was full of the clapper of 
excited female tongues. The Signorina was not 
sorry to leave the jug of warm water and the 
extraordinary fluctuating temperatures. She 
was followed by the summer visitors, motor 
veils and ribbons flying. 

As she left, a cheerful, red-faced lady was 
heard to announce casually, as she dropped the 
fat wrist of the veterinary's daughter, that 
there was no use her trying to take that pulse, 
as the girl hadn't got any. 

The clamorous group surrounded the camp- 
7i 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

bed, upon which was stretched a sardonic boy- 
scout, fully clothed, down to his clumping 
boots. He was aged about twelve, and assisted 
in the education of the " lidies " by commenting 
from time to time on their efforts in hoarse 
tones of cynicism. After one impulsive neo- 
phyte had seemed to be practising tossing him 
in a blanket, he remarked into space : " Nurses 
are not suppowsed to move the pytient." 

And to another who jerked his heels up : 
" Down't you forget, miss, I'm a bad caise !" 

The Signorina had never been taught how 
to make beds in the true hospital fashion 
before, and was painstakingly absorbed in the 
intricacies of rolling sheets without churning 
the " bad caise," when she was seized upon by 
one of the flutterers from the hotel. 

" We're going now ; it's been so interesting, 
we have enjoyed it. I shan't forget all you told 
me about temperatures. I feel quite able to 
look after our dear fellows already. Oh ! I 
must tell you. You've got such a sympathetic 
face. I'm sure you will understand. I had 
a most wonderful revelation the other day, in 
church — in^London, you know. I had such an 
extraordinary feeling — just as if something came 

72 



OUR MINISTERING ANGELS 

over me — and I thought the church was full of 
dead soldiers ; and a voice seemed to say to 
me : ' Pray.' I felt quite uplifted. And then 
in a minute it was all gone. Wasn't it won- 
derful ? That kind of thing makes one feel so 
strong, doesn't it ? Oh, I knew you would 
understand. The last news is very dis- 
quieting, isn't it ? What a darling little 
fellow!" 

The "bad caise " scowled at her horribly; 
but the sweetness of her smile was quite un- 
impaired, as she fluttered out of the hall. 

11 It is very important," said Nurse Blacker 
to the compress class, "that the nurse should 
wash her hands before touching the patient's 
wounds." 

" Now, tell me, Sister," interposed a meek 
voice, "is that precaution for the nurse's sake 
or for the patient's ? I mean, I suppose it's in 
case the nurse should incur any infection from 
the wound ?" 

This point of view — that of the White 
Queen in " Alice Through the Looking-Glass " 
— had not apparently struck Nurse Blacker 
before. 

73 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

It all seems too ridiculous to be true, but yet 
the facts are here set down as they actually 
occurred. 

We think there are a good many women 
about the world of the type of the spinster and 
her sisters, and we are also convinced that it 
would be quite impossible to succeed in im- 
pressing upon such minds even the most rudi- 
mentary notions of nursing ; yet it is likely 
enough they may all have been granted cer- 
tificates eventually. Professionals are dread- 
fully bored in dealing with amateurs, and are 
often glad to take the shortest road to deliver- 
ance. 

We were once witness, in pre-war days, of 
the examination of a Red Cross class in the 
north of England. There was a weary doctor 
on the platform with a bag of bones ; and a 
retired hospital nurse, very anxious to be on 
good terms with the delightful family who 
were the chief organizers of the movement, 
had charge of the " show." 

The doctor gave a brief address upon dis- 
location. It ran somewhat in this fashion. 

11 Dislocation is the misplacement of a joint. 
It is indicated by the symptoms of swelling, 

74 



OUR MINISTERING ANGELS 

redness, pain, and inability to move the limb. 
There is no crepitation as in a fracture. As to 
treatment : my advice to you, ladies, when you 
meet a case of this kind, is — ahem — to leave it 
severely alone and to send for a medical man." 

The class took copious notes. The doctor 
dropped the two bones with which he had 
been demonstrating into the bag again, leant 
back in his chair and closed his eyes. His part 
of the transaction was concluded. It had been 
most illuminating, the ladies agreed, and the 
Signorina's chauffeur, who has a yearning 
towards general self-improvement, remarked 
to her on the way home : 

" Ow " — like the boy scout, he has a theatri- 
cally cockney accent — " I am glad to know what 
to do for discollation. I'd never studied that, 
loike, before." 

While the doctor leant back and rested, the 
hospital nurse examined each student privately 
on the subject of the previous instructions. 
The Signorina happened to be quite close to a 
little old lady with bonnet and strings, and a 
small, eager, withered, agitated face under 
bands of frizzled grey hair — the kind of little 
old lady who is always ready to respond to the 

75 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

call of duty, and who is in the van of knitters 
for " our dear, brave soldiers " or " our gallant 
tars." 

" What," said the hospital nurse tenderly, 
11 would you do for a bed-sore ?" 

The little old lady began to twitter and 
flutter : 

11 1 would first wash the place w T ith warm 
water, and — oh, dear me, dear me, I did know, 
I knew quite well a minute ago — with, with 
something to disinfect." 

11 It is something to disinfect, quite right," 
approved the nurse. 

11 A salt, I think — I'm sure it was. I could 
get it at the chemist " 

"Certainly," said the nurse, as if she were 
speaking to a child of two years old, "the 
chemist would be sure to keep it. It's quite a 
simple thing. But you would have to know 
what to ask for, wouldn't you ?" 

" Oh, dear me, yes. P— p — or did it begin 
with an I ?" 

" Perchloride of mercury," said the nurse, 
smothering a yawn. 

"Oh yes," cried the little old lady, delighted, 
" that's it." 

76 



OUR MINISTERING ANGELS 

" Well, now you know it, don't you," said 
the nurse brightly, wrote " Passed " in her 
notebook, and turned to the next. 

11 How much liquid nourishment would you 
give a typhoid patient at a time ?" 

This to a village girl, who looked blank, not 
to say terrified, and wrung her hands in her 
lap. 

" I mean," helped the questioner, " if the 
patient were put on milk — a milk diet, very 
usual in typhoid cases — how much milk would 
you give at a time ?" 

The girl's face lit up. 

" Two quarts, miss," she said with alacrity. 

"Not at a time, I think," corrected the ex- 
aminer, quite unruffled. " Two quarts, perhaps, 
in the twenty-four hours, if you could get the 
patient to take it — that would be splendid. 
Typhoid is a very weakening malady. It's a 
good thing to keep the strength up — if you can, 
you know." 

The Signorina heard this optimist make her 
report a little later to the charming daughter 
of the charming family, who had herself studied 
to good purpose, but was too modest to under- 
take the instructions. 

77 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

" They've all answered beautifully. Look at 
my notebook " 

It was " Passed," " Passed," to every name. 

" That is good," said the gratified organizer. 
" We have done well to-day." 

No doubt one occasionally comes across odd 
specimens even among professionals. Cer- 
tainly, during a long illness with which the 
Signora was afflicted a couple of years ago, 
three of the five nurses who succeeded each 
other in attendance upon her cannot be said to 
have lightened the burthen. 

The first, sent for at eleven o'clock at night, 
distinguished herself by instantly upsetting a 
basin of hot water into the patient's bed. As 
she repeated the process next night, and greeted 
the accident with shrieks of laughter, it could 
scarcely be regarded as the exceptional breach 
which proves the rule of excellence. 

The Signora, who was not supposed to be 
moved at all, has, fortunately, the sense of 
humour which helps one along the troublesome 
way of life, in sickness as in health. She 
laughed too. The nurse, who was an Irish- 
woman, immediately thought herself rather a 

78 



OUR MINISTERING ANGELS 

wag. She was a little, vivacious creature, ugly, 
but bright-eyed. She was extremely talkative, 
and perhaps the most callous person the Signora 
has ever come across. It is our experience 
that all nurses are talkative. If the patient 
wants to make life endurable at all, the talk 
must be guided into the least disagreeable 
channels. 

The Signora's dread is the tale of operations 
— " of practice in the theatre," which one of the 
nurses of her youth told her she considered 
" an agreeable little change." — This particular 
Dorcas's favourite topic was deathbeds. The 
patient was quite aware that the supreme ex- 
perience was a not at all impossible event for 
herself in the near future, so she had a certain 
personal interest in the matter. Anyhow, she 
permitted the discourse. 

She heard at full length the narration of 
Nurse MacDermott's first deathbed in private 
nursing. It was a horrible anecdote, which 
might have formed a chapter in a realistic 
novel. "A gentleman at Wimbledon it was," 
evidently of the well-to-do merchant class, and 
he seemed, poor man! to have been the unhappy 
father of a family as cold-blooded and heartless 

79 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

as the wife in Tolstoi's painful story of death. 
But here there was no one to care, not even 
a poor servant lad — not even the nurse whose 
vocation it was to help him through the final 
agony. She arrived at ten o'clock, and at 
eleven the doctor warned the family that the 
patient would not pass the night. Thereupon 
everyone — the wife, two daughters, and a son — 
retired to bed, and left the dying man in charge 
of the newly arrived attendant, who sat down 
to watch, reading a novel. About two o'clock 
the moribund began to make painful efforts to 
speak. 

" Charlie, Charlie," he kept saying. 

" Ah, the poor fellow !" said the little nurse, 
as she recounted the story, " he had a son who 
was a scapegrace, it seems, off away some- 
where, and he wanted to send him a message. 
I ran and called the wife out of her bed — what 
do you think ? She'd put her hair in crimpers ! 
Upon my word, she had ; they were bristling 
all round the head of her. Well, I didn't want 
to have him die on me while I was out of the 
room, so I rushed back. And he made signs to 
me. The power of speech was gone from him. 
He wanted to write. I had a bit of pencil, but 

80 



OUR MINISTERING ANGELS 

there wasn't a scrap of paper that I could see, 
so there was nothing I could give him but the 
fly-leaf of the book I was reading ; and ah ! the 
poor fellow, it was only scrawls he could make 
after all. And sure, he was dead before his 
wife came in. And she just gave one look at him, 
and, ' I'm going back to bed,' says she, and back 
to bed she went. But it was the hair-curlers 
that did for me. I never can forget them." 

She was sitting at the end of the Signora's 
bed, and doubled herself up with laughter 
as she spoke. We have no doubt but that she 
went back to her novel, scrawled with the 
dying father's last futile effort. 

We never knew anyone quite so frankly 
unmoved by the awful scenes it was her trade 
to witness. She found vast amusement in the 
wanderings of delirious patients. Whenever 
she wanted to cheer the other nurses up, she 
informed us, in the Home where they dwelt 
together, she could always make them laugh 
with little anecdotes from the typhoid ward ; 
and the " wanderings " from the different beds. 

She tried to cheer the Signora up on these 
lines ; and the Signora, on wakeful nights, has 
to force her mind away from the " humorous " 

81 G 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

memories. She infinitely preferred the story 
of Nurse McDermott's love affairs. Like many 
ugly people, the young woman believed herself 
irresistible, and paid a great deal of attention 
to the conservation of her charms. Once, 
having settled her patient for the night, she 
reappeared unexpectedly en robe de chambre. 

11 1 have just come to tell you how many 
creams I have put on myself," she cried to the 
bewildered lady. " I know it will amuse you ! 
There's the pomade for my hair, and Valaze 
for my face, and the lanoline for my neck. I 
do hate the mark of the collar — for evening 
dress, you know — it gives one away so ! And 
there's the salve for my lips, and the cold cream 
for my hands, and the polish for my nails " 

She went away in a hurry to a bad case 
at Liphurst, jubilating because we were paying 
her journey, and she would get it out of the 
other lady also, and the doctor had offered 
to send her in his car. 

Of quite another type was Nurse Vischet. 
No one could say that she was unaffected by 
her patient's symptoms. They had the power 
of flinging her into frenzy. Capable enough 
when things were going fairly well with her 

82 



OUR MINISTERING ANGELS 

charge, the first shadow of a change for the 
worse produced in her what can only be 
described as fury. Her face would become 
convulsed, her eyes would flame, she would 
knock the furniture about as she moved, and 
could barely restrain herself from insulting 
the sufferer. 

At first the Signora, who was very ill and 
weaker than it is possible to describe, could 
not at all understand these outbursts. " What 
can have annoyed Nurse ?" she would wonder 
feebly to herself. But presently she under- 
stood. It was really a mixed terror of, and 
repulsion from, the sight of suffering. Why 
such a woman should have become a nurse, 
and how she could continue in the service 
of the sick, feeling as she did, remains a 
mystery. The key to her extraordinary be- 
haviour was given one day by a little dog, who 
happened to be seized with a very common 
or garden fit of choking through the nose ; such 
as affects little dogs with slight colds in their 
heads. Nurse Vischet started screaming. 

11 He's all right," said the Signora. " He 
only wants his nose rubbed. Carry him over 
to me if you won't do it yourself." 

83 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

" Ugh !" shrieked Nurse Vischet. " I think 
it's dying. I wouldn't touch it for the world !" 

One of the symptoms of the human patient's 
illness were agonizing headaches, during which 
she could scarcely bear a ray of light in the 
room. In spite of frequent requests, Nurse 
Vischet always seized the occasion to turn the 
ceiling electric light full on the bed, and when 
at last forbidden to do so, she declined to enter 
a room in which she could not see her way. 
The Signora gave her the name of her " minis- 
tering devil." She was a rabid Socialist, and 
had peculiar theories, one of which we remem- 
ber was that condemned criminals should be 
handed over to the laboratories for vivisection. 

She had also to an acute degree the hospital 
nurse's capacity for upsetting the household 
Our butler, a hot-tempered man, happened 
to drop a stray "damn" in the hearing of the 
under-housemaid, and Vischet, hanging on the 
landing over the kitchen regions, as she was 
fond of doing, overheard the dread word. The 
whole establishment was turned upside down. 
Maggie was told that she " owed it to her 
womanhood " not to allow foul language in her 
presence. Maggie gave notice, but being, 

84 



OUR MINISTERING ANGELS 

after all, an Irish girl with a sense of humour, 
was as easily soothed down as she had been 
worked up. Certainly, however, if we had 
kept Nurse Vischet, we should have lost, one 
by one, our excellent staff of servants. Besides 
playing on their feelings against each other, 
she had a horrible trick of telling them they 
were at the last gasp upon the smallest ailment. 
She did not like her patient to have symptoms ; 
but she encouraged the domestics to fly to her 
with theirs. 

Irish Maggie had an indigestion. Vischet 
declared her condition to be of extreme gravity. 
She rushed to the Signora with her tale. 
Maggie was ordered to bed. Vischet pro- 
duced an immense tin of antiphlogistine with 
which to arrest "the mischief." 

The daughter of the house went up to visit 
the sick girl, and came down laughing to console 
her mother. 

M You needn't worry about Maggie," she said, 
and gave a pleasant little description of the 
scene and the invalid's remarks. 

"Ah, sure I'm all right, miss. It's all along 
of a bit of green apple. Sure, Mrs. MacComfort 
has just given me a drop of ginger, and it's 

85 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

done me a lot of good already. Do you see 
what Nurse is after bringing me ? God bless 
us all, wouldn't I rather die itself than be 
spreading that putty on me ! I'll be up for tea, 
miss." 

"She looks as rosy as possible," went on the 
comforter, "and ever so nice with her hair in a 
great thick plait tied with ribbons, grass green, 
for Ireland." 

Through one recollection Vischet will always 
remain endeared to the mind of her victim ; 
and that was for her singular pronunciation. 
There was a story to which the Signora was 
fond of leading up relating to por-poises, 
(pronounced to rhyme with noises), and another 
connected with a tor-toise, which happened to 
be the pet of a recent " case." There was also 
a little tale of a dog : " I was out walking on 
the embankment," said Vischet, "and I saw a 
man coming along leading two dogs — one was 
a great bulldog, and the other was one of those 
queer creatures you call a dashun " (the Signora 
prides herself on her intelligence for instantly 
discovering that the narrator meant a dachs- 
hund). "And there was running about loose 
the queerest animal ever I saw," went on the 

86 



OUR MINISTERING ANGELS 

nurse; "it had the head of a bulldog and the 
legs of a dashun." 

The third nurse was very different. The 
daughter of an officer, who was seeking the 
most genteel way to make her living, she frankly 
handed over the chief of the attendance to the 
Signora' s own devoted maid ; which, on the 
Signora becoming aware of her incapacity, she 
was on the whole glad that she should do. 
Nurse Fraser was a tall, handsome girl, who 
was fond of sitting on the sofa at the foot of 
the patient's bed, her hands clasped round her 
knees, staring into space. She was by no 
means unamiable, but she was bored ; and the 
Signora, who rather liked her, was not averse 
to screening her deficiencies. When the doctor 
inquired after the temperature that had never 
been taken, she herself would declare it had 
beenjiormal ; and she was amused when Nurse 
Fraser would next vouch for a " splendid break- 
fast." She not having appeared in her patient's 
room till noon. 

She made no attempt to conceal her complete 
inefficiency in the treatment of the case. 

"Oh, do tell me what I'm to do," she had 
cried on arrival to the district nurse who had 

87 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

come in as a stopgap. " I'm sure if I ever knew 
anything about the illness I've quite forgotten." 

One day — she, too, was garrulous — she in- 
formed her patient that her mother had shares 
in Kentish Mines. " If ever they work out, we 
may get a lot of money, and then," she cried, 
quite unconscious of offence, " no more beastly 
sick people for me !" 

She left us in tears. She had enjoyed herself 
very much. 

It would seem as if our experience had been 
unfortunate, and yet it is not so ; for surely to 
have known two perfect nurses one after another 
is sufficient to re-establish the balance. Chief 
of these, first and dearest, was Nurse Dove. 
She was the district nurse, called in, as we 
have said, in a moment of emergency. How 
Miss Nightingale would have loved her ! 
Blessed little creature, it was enough to restore 
anybody's heart to see her come into the sick- 
room, quiet, capable, tender, her eyes shining 
with compassion for the sufferer and eagerness 
to relieve. She was as gentle as she was skil- 
ful : to anyone who did not know her it would 
be impossible to convey the extent of the virtue 
contained in this phrase. The Signora would 

88 



OUR MINISTERING ANGELS 

have placed herself, or, what means a great deal 
more, her nearest and dearest, with the com- 
pletest confidence in her hands alone, in any 
dangerous illness. 

Among the poor she was an apostle. It 
seemed to have been her fate that, during her 
brief stay in our village, several young mothers 
found themselves in mortal extremity. She 
never lost a life. We think now with longing 
of what she would have been among the 
wounded. Alas ! we were not destined to 
keep such perfection with us. It was Cupid, 
not death, that robbed us of this treasure — if 
Cupid, indeed, it can be called, the dingy, 
doubtful imp that took her away from her 
wonderful work among us. Alas ! charming, 
devoted, exquisite being as she was, she had 
a very human side. We fear there was a touch 
of "pike," as the old gardener had it, in the 
business, but in spite of all our efforts a 
"coloured gentleman," an invalid to boot, a 
shifty elderly fellow with an Oriental glibness 
of tongue, carried her off away with him back 
to India. She has since written to us describing 
her palatial abode on the borders of a lake with 
a horde of servants and a private steam-launch, 

89 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

but we strongly suspect that if the pen was the 
pen of Nurse Dove, the words were the words 
of the coloured gentleman. 

The individual was a Baboo, a clerk in 
the Madras Post Office, and had already 
been invalided out of the service before he left 
England. We cannot believe that the pension 
of an underling in the Indian Civil Service runs 
to these Rajah -like splendours. Moreover, 
there was a tragic little postcard, sent to a 
humble friend, which did not at all correspond 
with the highflown letter above-mentioned : 
" The world is a very sad place ; we must all 
be prepared for disappointments." 

There is one thing quite certain — wherever 
she goes she will be doing good. 

Curiously enough, the second perfect nurse 
resembled her in dark pallor of skin, splendour 
of raven tresses, and thoughtful brilliance of 
brown eyes; but she was younger and more 
timid. She will want a few more years of 
experience and self-reliance before she can 
develop into a Nurse Dove. 

But nevertheless, resembling her in coun- 
tenance, she had the same deep womanly heart 
for her patients. Suffering in their sufferings, 

90 



OUR MINISTERING ANGELS 

she would spare no pains to relieve them. And 
she had the touch of imaginative genius and 
the courage to act on her own responsibility 
which made her presence in a house of sickness 
a comfort and a strength. In fact, the life was 
to her a vocation. She nursed to help others, 
not herself. She had not grown callous through 
the sight of agonies, only more urgent to be 
of use. 

God send many such to our men in their need 
to-day! 



9i 



IV 

"CONSIDER THE LILIES" 

" For the first time the Lamb shall be dyed red. . . ." 
Brother Johannes' Prophecy. 

u 8 Consider the lilies, how they grow. . . ." 

The sad thing is that with us they decline 
to grow. When we bought the small, high- 
perched house and grounds on the Surrey 
hills there is no doubt that the thought of 
lilies in those terraced gardens was no un- 
important part of the programme. Oddly, the 
little house had from the first an Italian look, 
which we have not been slow to cultivate. 

Now we were haunted by a picture of an 
Italian garden : a pergola — vine-covered, it was 
— with two serried ranks of Madonna lilies 
growing inside the arches ; flagged as to path- 
way, with probably fragrant tufts of mint and 
thyme between the stones. In the land of its 
conception this vision of shadowy green and 
exquisite white, cool yet shining, as if snow- 

92 



"CONSIDER THE LILIES" 

fashioned, must have given upon some stretch 
of quivering, heat-baked country. 

Without being able to provide such an anti- 
thesis, the garden -plotter — she means the 
dreadful quip — otherwise the mistress of the 
English Villino, with a vivid and charming pic- 
ture in her mind's eye, fondly imaged a very 
effective outlook upon the great shouldering 
moors that rise startlingly across the narrow 
valle}' at the bottom of her garden. But the 
lilies refused to grow. 

She tried them in border after border. She 
set clumps of Auratums under the dining-room 
between the heliotrope and the Nicotianas, 
which swing such gushes of fragrance into 
the little house all the hot summer days. She 
got monster bulbs of Madonnas from the first 
specialist in the kingdom, and put them singly 
between the red and white roses against the 
upper terrace wall. She ran amok upon 
luscious spotted darlings ; Pardelinum and 
Monadelphum, Polyphyllum and Parryi, and 
had them placed in a cool, shady walk against 
a background of delphiniums. She thrust 
Harrisi under the drawing-room bow; and the 
glorious scarlet -trumpeted Thunbergianum 

93 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

where they would flame in the middle distance. 
They showed many varied forms of disapproval, 
but were unanimous in declining to remain 
with us. Some were a little more polite than 
the others. The great trumpets blew fiercely 
for one season, almost as with a sound of 
glorious brass, in their dim nook ; and a single 
exquisite, perfect stem of Krameri rose intact 
amid a dying sisterhood, and swayed, delicately 
proud, faintly flushed, a very princess among 
flowers, one long, golden September fortnight. 
But such meteors only make our persistent 
gloom, where lilies are concerned, the more 
signal. 

The pergola had to go the way 01 so many 
cherished dreams. Yet there is an exception. 
With just an occasional threat of disease, there 
is one border favoured by the tiger-lily. She 
is not a very choice creature, of course; she 
has neither the fragrance nor the mystic grace 
of her cousins ; but such as she is, she is 
welcome in our midst. On our third terrace 
there is a stretch of turf, curved outwards like 
a half-moon, against a new yew hedge : we 
call it the Hemicycle. In spring it is a jocund 
pleasaunce for crocus and scylla and flowering 

94 



"CONSIDER THE LILIES" 

trees — almond, Pyrus floribunda, and peach ; in 
summer the weeping standards hold the field, 
set between the pots of climbing geraniums. 
That is on the outward curve. A rough wall, 
overhung with Dorothy Perkins, clothed from 
the base with Reve d'Or, runs straightly on the 
inner side. It is in the border underneath this 
wall that the tiger-ladies condescend to us. 

Last year, by a somewhat accidental de- 
velopment of seeds, we had a marvellous post- 
impressionist effect along the line, for all the 
stocks there planted, between the Tigrinum, 
turned out to be purple and mauve. They 
grew tall, with immense heads of bloom : drawn 
up by the wall, we think. Over the orange 
and violet row the Dorothy Perkins showered 
masses of vivid pink. A narrow ribbon of 
bright pale yellow violas ran between the 
border and the turf. To connect this mass of 
startling colour, an intermediate regiment of 
lavender-bushes and the cream hues of the 
Reve d'Or roses against their grey-green foli- 
age acted very successfully. It is not a scheme 
that one would perhaps have tried deliberately, 
but we could not regret it. It does one good 
sometimes to steep the senses in such a fine 

95 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

tangle of elementary colour. The shock is 
bracing, as of a sea wave; like the march of 
a military band, we could enjoy it, in the open 
air and sunshine, just where it was placed ; 
away from the house, with its distant back- 
ground of fir-trees and moors. 

Yet it is a mistake to use the word " post- 
impressionist" in connection with our border; 
for that movement, with all its pretended re- 
vival of the old pagan spirit of joy, was only 
an effort to conceal fundamental misery. The 
tango is no dance of gods and nymphs, but a 
dreadful merry-go-round of lost souls. The 
post -impressionist painting is not a flag of 
radiant defiance — youth challenging the un- 
believed gloom of life — but a kind of outbreak 
as of disease: something spotty, fungoid, shaped 
like germs under the microscope. 

Let us come back to the lilies. Come out of 
the fever-room into the garden. 

We once tried to make a field of lilies. Our 
lowest garden has a different kind of soil 
fortunately from the greensand which makes 
the upper terrace beds such rapacious devourers 
of manure and fertilizers, and all the other 
necessary and unfragrant riches. The Signora 

96 



"CONSIDER THE LILIES" 

took thought with herself and made a kind of 
nursery plantation at one end of the vegetable 
garden, to the meek despair of our gardener, 
who, like all other gardeners, cherishes a 
cabbage-patch with a passionate preference. 
She invested in a good three thousand bulbs, 
among others, hundreds of Candidums. Was 
it a punishment for her extravagance ? Many 
years of life and experience have taught her 
that where we sin we are punished, by as 
inevitable a law as that of cause and effect. Or 
was it just the cursed spite of those wandering 
devils who, Indian and Irish folk alike believe, 
are always hovering ready to pounce upon 
success? Whether justice or malice, it is im- 
material ; the result was disaster. They had 
sent up straight spikes of vivid green, un- 
touched by a trace of the horrible bilious com- 
plexion that bespeaks the prevalent disease, 
when the May frost came and laid them flat 
and seared. 

After all, they would hardly have been much 
use in that especial spot, as far as garden 
perspective is concerned; and except for the 
hall and staircase lilies are not indoor flowers. 
The Signora loves the warm fragrance to gush 

97 h 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

up diffused through the house, but in any 
room it becomes overwhelming, almost gross. 
She does not even care for them pictorially at 
close quarters, meaning here the larger kind, 
including Candidum. They are essentially 
open-air flowers ; they need the sun and the 
wind about them, background and space. It 
seems almost blasphemous to say so, but on 
the nearer sight their appearance becomes like 
their scent, a little coarse. 

On an altar, once again, they assume their 
proper proportions ; and, carved in stone, they 
are decorative and satisfying. But the Arum 
lily, which is not a lily at all, long-stemmed, in 
a vase, with its own gorgeous leaves about it, 
is something to sit and gaze at with ever- 
increasing content ! 

The nearest thing to a field of lilies the 
Signora ever saw was a whole gardenful 
at the back of a little house in Brussels. She 
was only a child at the time, a weary, bored, 
depressed small person at that, in the uncon- 
genial surroundings of a detested private 
school. But one Sunday morning, for some 
unremembered reason, she was taken after 
Mass by the second mistress (an ugly, angry 

98 



"CONSIDER THE LILIES" 

woman, inappropriately baptized Estelle), and 
brought out of the dust of the scorching street 
into this, to all appearance trivial, not to say 
sordid, little house. 

" Would Mademoiselle like to look at my 
garden ?" said its owner. 

She was old and wizened and yellow-faced ; 
but she had kind eyes, and it was certainly a 
kindly thought. 

The whole of that garden, some forty by 
twenty feet, was filled with Madonna lilies, 
growing like grass in a field, with only a 
narrow path whereby to walk round them. 

" Consider the lilies how they grow. . . . 
Not Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as 
one of these !" 

The child that saw them was too unyeared 
and ignorant to apply these wonderful words 
if she had ever heard them. She could not 
feel her pleasure sharpened by the exquisite 
sensation of having the vision phrased in 
language as beautiful as itself. But she has 
carried away the memory, as sacredly as 
Wordsworth that of his daffodils — 

" I gazed — and gazed — but little thought 
What wealth the show to me had brought : 

99 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

" For oft, when on my couch I lie 

In vacant or in pensive mood, 

They flash upon that inward eye 

Which is the bliss of solitude, 

And then my heart with pleasure fills 

And dances with the Daffodils." 

Wordsworth, notably among poets, has the 
gift of expressing the inexpressible, of clothing 
in language some fleeting sensation which 
seems, of its exquisiteness and illusiveness, 
undefinable. There are lines of his that follow 
one like a phrase of music. 

" The sounding cataract haunted me like a passion." 

" The light that never was on sea or land." 

"... Old, unhappy, far-off things, 
And battles long ago." 

The first effect of any sight of surpassing 
beauty, indeed of any strong emotion of admira- 
tion, is an instant desire of expression; then 
comes the pain of inarticulateness to most of us 
— there is a swelling of the soul and no outlet ! 
That is why, when someone else may have 
perfectly said what for us is inexpressible, 
tnere is a double joy in discoveries. 

To wander from our lilies to flowers of 
speech and description : the perfect phrase has 

ioo 



"CONSIDER THE LILIES" 

in itself a delight that almost equals that of the 
perfect thought. 

For those who, like ourselves, work in words, 
however humbly— poor stone-breakers com- 
pared to such as make the marble live — the 
mere art in the setting of the words them- 
selves has a fascination of its own. It is 
not only the idea — it is sometimes not even 
the idea that enchants. There is a magic 
of cadence alone. Sometimes, indeed, just 
a conjunction of two words seems to make 
a chord. 

To go further, a single word may ring out 

like a note upon the mind. The Italian A more, 

for instance — who can deny that it echoes richly 

and nobly ? It is a sound of gravity and 

passion mixed. It is like the first vibrating 

stroke of a master-hand on the 'cello. Did not 

the resonance of the word itself go as far 

as the meaning to inspire Jacopone with his 

ecstatic hymn wherein he plays upon it like 

a musician upon a note which calls, insists, 

repeats itself, for ever dominates or haunts the 

theme ? — 

" Amore, amore, che si m'hai ferito 
Altro che amore non posso gridare : 
Amore, amore, teco so unito. . . ." 

IOI 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

You could not take the word " love " and ring 
the changes in this way, not even upon the 
kindred-sounding Amour, losing in its "ou" 
exactly the tone of solemnity that makes the 
Italian equivalent so royal. 

In a delightful series of musical sketches 
recently published, the author remarks, speak- 
ing of Tschaikowski's " Symphonie Pathetique ": 

11 For those who have the score there is an 
added joy in the titles, ' Incalzando,' ' feroce,' 
'affretando,' 'saltando,' 'con dolcezza e flebile,' 
'con tenerezza e devozione '; it makes most 
interesting reading. But the most splendid 
title of all is that of the last movement, ' Adagio 
Lamentoso ' — can't you hear it ? What a lot 
our language misses by the clipped and oxytone 
1 lament '! Even ( lamentation ' is a mere shadow 
beside the full roll of the Latin tongues, the 
ineffable melody that sounds in ' lamentabile 
regnum.' " 

We do not, however, agree with this pleasant 
writer on the subject of " clipped and oxytone 
lament." To us the English word is infinitely 
keener reaching than any added vowel could 
make it ! " Lamentable " we grant to be pom- 
pous and middle Victorian. It is eloquent of 

102 



" CONSIDER THE LILIES" 

the conventional mourning of the funeral mute, 
while lamentoso has to our ear a horrible wobble 
like the howl of a lonely dog. 

We defy the most poetical and profound 
scholar to render in any other tongue the guai 
of Dante. Who could give the value of the 
hopeless cry of sorrow culminating in that line 
of which guai is the central wail ! 

" Cosi vid' io venir, traendo guai 
Ombre portate della delta briga." 

This is not to insist on the obvious that 
Italian is a musical language and Dante a star 
apart. Every language that has served litera- 
ture will be found to hold its own words of 
magic. It is not the moment to quote German, 
but we think Trauer tolls across the senses like 
the passing-bell, while the French Glas falls 
upon the soul with a frozen misery indescrib- 
able outside itself. 

Those fortunate scholars who have mastered 
as much of the secrets of Greek as the modern 
can master, tell us that it is impossible to 
convey in any other tongue the richness, the 
value, the wide meaning and exquisite shades 
of the ancient Greek language. We know that 
they had words in each of which a whole 

103 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

picture could be set before the mind. To read 
Gilbert Murray's fascinating "Ancient Greek 
Literature " is, however, to find a revelation 
which severer and more extensive writings 
fail to convey. A poet, he alone has caught 
and interpreted the echo of those lyres still 
ringing across the ages. And he, too, computes 
his impressions in terms of music. "Many 
lovers of Pindar," he says, "agree that the 
things which stay in one's mind, stay not as 
thoughts but as music." 

Of course, the Greeks wedded words and 
music after a fashion unknown to us, who 
merely set words to be sung to music in our 
operas and songs. It is a lost art. 

But it seems conceivable that there may be 
an actual music hidden in language itself, some- 
thing that the senses of the mind apprehend, 
quite apart from the idea incorporated. The 
late Sir Henry Irving, just before his famous 
production of Macbeth, discussing his intention 
of introducing music at the moments of crisis, 
defended this much criticized point by saying : 
" I mean to do it, because music carries the 
soul beyond words, even beyond thought." 

We are not sure that he was right, except in so 
104 



" CONSIDER THE LILIES" 

far as the appeal to the gallery was concerned, 
which, after all, every actor-manager, however 
artistic and perceptive, is bound to consider 
first of all. In fact, we are quite certain that 
he was wrong. The music of Shakespeare 
should not have been overlaid by any sound 
of violin or trumpet. 

We can conceive no sorrow of muted strings 
which could intensify the poignancy of Macduff's 
cry : " All my pretty ones, did you say all ?" A 
cry, too, so spontaneous in its truth and sim- 
plicity that, according to a current phrase in 
the theatrical profession, the part of Macduff 
acts itself. 

Who would want to add more melody to the 
following 

u That strain again— it had a dying fall : 
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south 
That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
Stealing, and giving odour. . . ." 

Will anyone deny that there is music in these 
lines, that the singular impression produced by 
them is due not only to the perfection of a 
thought perfectly expressed, to the scent of 
violets exquisitely and instantly evoked by the 
cunning of genius, but to the actual words ? 

105 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

The phrase rises and falls. Read or heard, 
it is the same, a strain of melody. 

To one of the writers the two words, 
"Scarlet Verbena," have always produced the 
impression as of a trumpet blast. Hoffmann 
used to say that he never smelt a red carnation 
without hearing the winding of a horn. 

No doubt the senses are indefinably inter- 
mixed. 

" Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet, 
Rings Eden thro' the budded quicks, 
O tell me where the senses mix, 
O tell me where the passions meet " — 

cries Tennyson to the nightingale. 

Nevertheless, must one not believe that there 
are distinct senses of the soul and mind which 
are called into action by the spoken or written 
word ? It is trite to say there are moments 
when one is gripped by the throat by a mere 
phrase, not, mind you, because of its dramatic 
force, but rather from some inherent spell of 
beauty or sorrow. There are others when one 
seems to lay hold of a set of words ; as it were, 
to be able to touch and feel them as though 
they had been modelled. 

And again, who has not felt an actual pain, as 
1 06 



"CONSIDER THE LILIES" 

of a delicate blade being thrust into the heart, 
by some phrase of scarcely analyzable pathos. 
Heine had that weapon. The art of it, we 
suppose, is that of extreme simplicity combined 
with selection, but the emotion is quite incom- 
mensurate with the importance of the theme, 
the value of the expressed idea. 

To use another simile, it is like a wailing air 
on some primitive instrument, which by its 
very artlessness pierces to the marrow of the 
consciousness. 

" Ces doux airs du pays, au doux rythme obsesseur, 
Dont chaque note est comme une petite sceur," 

as Rostand has it. 

Think of the effect in "Tristran" of the 
shepherd's pipe at the beginning of the last 
act. 

It comes to this after all, that however one 
may study, however perfect the technique of 
writing, however one may inspire oneself from 
the springs of genius, it is artlessness, not art, 
that reaches home. It might be truer to say that 
it takes a consummate art to touch the right note 
of artlessness ; yet we all know how curiously 
we can sometimes be affected by the words 
that fall from childish lips. 

107 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

A Belgian babe of two, a dimpled, radiant 
creature, seemingly untouched by the storm 
which had flung her from her own luxurious 
nurseries into a bare English lodging, was 
found, two days after her arrival in exile, kiss- 
ing and talking to the little crucifix which 
hung round her neck. Her mother bent to 
listen. 

" Dear Jesus," the child was saying, " poor 
wounded soldier !" 

The profound and mystic consolation of the 
link between the human agony and the Divine 
had somehow dawned upon the infant mind, 
and found this tender expression. 

A little boy we knew said to his mother one 
evening as she tucked him up in his cot : 

11 Oh, mammie, I die a little every night, 
I love you so." Here, with an exquisite direct- 
ness, the inevitable pain of a deep tenderness 
is laid bare by the lips of innocence. 



It is this quality of simplicity and directness — 
yes, we are not afraid to say it, of innocence — 
which makes the stories of our soldiers so 
infinitely touching. 

108 



''CONSIDER THE LILIES" 

" Tell daddie and mammie," said a dying 
Irish lad to the comrade who bent over him 
to take his last message, " 'twas against their 
will I 'listed; tell them I'm not sorry now I 
did it." 

No fine-sounding phrase, no stirring oration, 
could more piercingly set forth the triumph of 
the ultimate sacrifice of patriotism. Duke et 
decorum est pro p atria mori. 

Our men are like children in their gaiety — 
pleased with little things as a child with a toy; 
joking, making believe, making a game out of 
their very danger ; unconscious of their own 
heroism, as the best kind of boy, who risks his 
neck for a nest ; blindly confident in their 
leaders. If it had not been for this complete 
trust in what their officers told them, could the 
retreat from Mons have ended in anything but 
disaster ? Yet we know that — like children — 
whole regiments burst into tears when ordered 
to give up the positions they had won. 

A war correspondent ends a terrible account 
of the further withdrawal trom Tournai by a 
description of a night in a barn where scatterers 
had taken refuge. 

11 And all night long," he says, " there were 
109 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

the sobs of a big corporal of artillery, weeping 
for his horses." 

In the throes of the great struggle, this side 
of humanity — call it the childish, if you will, we 
have Divine authority for believing that it is 
akin to the spiritual — asserts itself, nay, be^- 
comes paramount. To be more precise, the 
real man is stripped of his conventions, sophis- 
tries, and pretences. Only the things that 
matter are the things that count. 

When the Emperor Frederick was dying, his 
last message was this : " Let my people return 
to their faith and simplicity of life." 

If he had been spared to his own land, it 
would be a different world to-day. Under the 
dreadful test of war the German soldiery as a 
mass, indeed the whole people, have sunk 
below the level of the brute. It is the Eng- 
lish who have come back to faith and sim- 
plicity. 

The Rev. W. Forest, Catholic Chaplain of 
the Expeditionary Force, writes : " It is true to 
say that the German Kaiser is fighting a com- 
munity of saints — converted, if you like — but 
with not a mortal sin scarcely to be found 
among them." The special correspondent of 

no 



"CONSIDER THE LILIES" 

the Sunday Times has a touching testimony in 
a recent issue to men of all denominations : 
" To be at the front," he declares, " is to breathe 
the air of heroes. The Church of England 
chaplains, in accordance with the general wish 
among the men, are giving Early Communion 
Services. It is a marvellous sight," continues 
the journalist, - to see the throngs of soldiers 
kneeling in the dawn, the light on their up- 
turned faces. They go forth strengthened, 
ready for anything, feeling that the presence of 
Christ is amongst them." 

With our French Allies, too, the spirit of 
faith has reawakened. An English officer 
writes to the Evening Standard: "The French 
soldiers go into the trenches, each with his 
little medal of Our Lady hung round his neck 
— they pray aloud in action, not in fear, but 
with a high courage and a great trust." 

"On All Souls' Day," he adds, "I saw the 
village cure come out and bless the graves of 
our poor lads. The graves, mark, of rough 
Protestant soldiers, decorated with chrysan- 
themums by the villagers. These poor dead 
were blessed, and called the faithful departed, 
and wept over and prayed for." 

in 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

" And thine own soul a sword shall pierce, 
that out of many hearts thoughts may be 
revealed." 

If one may reverently paraphrase Simeon's 
prophecy to the mother of the Man of Sorrows, 
can one not say that the soul of the world 
is pierced to-day, and the thoughts of the 
nations revealed ? 

A neutral diplomat, recently arrived in 
England from Vienna, via Paris, has told us 
of the singular indifference of the Austrian 
capital to the tragedy in which her own sons 
are taking part. " Vienna," he says, " has 
shown only one moment of emotion, and that 
was when the little breakfast rolls were con- 
demned. No one cares in Vienna. Life is — 
how shall I say? — it is all one ' Merry Widow.' 
It is not that they have any confidence in their 
own army. They shrug their shoulders and 
spread out their hands, but in Germany — they 
have the faith of the hypnotized ! Nothing 
can happen to Germany, therefore Austria is 
safe." 

Recently an order was issued to have the 
cafes closed at one o'clock in the morning. It 
was not agreeable to the public, but they have 
112 



"CONSIDER THE LILIES" 

contrived a substitute for their petits pains 
which is some slight compensation. 

11 1 shall return," he added pensively— " I shall 
return with how much regret to the indecent 
carnival that is Vienna !" 

His impression of France was very different. 
He could not sufficiently express his astonish- 
ment at the change that had come over the 
country. The dignity of France, the quiet 
strength of France, the spiritual confidence of 
France ! In the army was only one appre- 
hension : lest they should not be upheld by 
the civilians in their determination to fight to 
the very end. The churches were crowded; men 
and women have alike returned to the faith of 
their fathers. There was no unseemly merry- 
making there, no unworthy attempt in cafe or 
theatre to forget the agonizing struggle. 

At a recent entertainment in a very poor 
quarter a pretty girl dressed as France appeared 
arm-in-arm with an actor got up like a British 
soldier, and there was immense applause ; but 
when she started the tango with her companion 
she was hissed off the stage. 

As for Paris : " Tenez," said our friend, in 
conclusion, " I will give you a little instance. 

113 1 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

I was walking'down the Rue de la Paix, when 
I heard a woman laugh out loud. Everyone in 
the street turned round to look at her." 

Of the thoughts of Germany what can be 
said? They need no pointing out. They are 
written in blood and fire from end to end of 
Belgium, and in a long stretch of once smiling 
France ; in Servia, carried out by Hungarians 
and Austrians, under German orders ; in 
Poland. They are written in the German 
Press for all the world to read : blasphemy, 
brag, bluster, hysterical hatred, insanity of 
futile threat, shameless asseveration of self- 
evident falsehood. " Do nations go mad ?" 
an American paper has asked. Germany 
presents the appalling spectacle of a nation 
run to evil. It is not only the war party, the 
soldiery, the press, the learned professors. It 
is the very population itself. The soul of 
Germany is revealing its thoughts. 



The lily-garden in the little Brussels by- 
street on the way to the Bois de la Cambre, if 
it is still in existence, must have ceased bloom- 
ing before the Germans entered Brussels. 

114 



" CONSIDER THE LILIES" 

Otherwise it is not likely that it should have 
escaped the fury of destruction which seizes 
them at the sight of anything pure and noble 
and beautiful. 

14 Consider the lilies." 

We know how the Uhlan officers deliberately 
rode backwards and forwards over the bloom- 
ing flower-beds in the great Place upon the 
day of their entrance march. 

We know how they stabled their horses in 
the world-famous conservatories of the Palace 
of Laecken — a custom they have practised at 
nearly every chateau in the country; how in 
that orgy which will for ever disgrace the name 
of the Duke of Brunswick the portrait of the 
young Queen of the Belgians, that royal flower 
of courage and devotion, was unspeakably in- 
sulted. 

We know how whole regiments have trampled 
over straggling children in the village streets 
— these little flower blossoms, as the Japanese 
call them. 

And those humble lilies of the cloister that 
have fallen into sacrilegious grasp, we know 
how they have been considered ; how Rheims, 
with its hawthorn porch, blossoming in stone 

"5 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

flower of all the Christian shrines of all the 
world, stately lily of the days of faith, has 
fared at the hand of the German. 

" Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint" says the 
Spirit of Evil in Goethe's " Faust." 

It has always seemed a marvellous definition ; 
the negation of good, the spirit that ever denies. 
But the demon of present-day Germany comes 
from a deeper pit than Goethe's intellectual 
mocking devil. It is the spirit that forever 
destroys. 

The struggle has not brutalized but spiritu- 
alized our men. Through the appalling condi- 
tions in which they fight they reach out to the 
mystic side of things. When they speak of 
death they call it "going west." It is the old, 
old Celtic thought of the Isle beyond the Sunset. 
They " talk of God a great deal," as the soldiers' 
letters tell us. The Irish Guards fell on 
their knees at Compiegne before making their 
famous attack up the hill. As they charged, 
11 our men crossed the plain, hurrahing and 
singing, while many of them had a look of 
absolute joy on their faces." They have their 
visions. A soldier lying wounded and help- 
less on the field and gazing agonized on the 
116 



" CONSIDER THE LILIES" 

breach in our line, saw the Germans rush and 
then fall back ; and beheld St. George standing 
in his armour in the gap ; then heard the Lan- 
castrians cry, as they dashed on : " St. George 
for England !" 

What yet more august revelation did he 
have, that dying French sergeant, who, looking 
profoundly upon the surgeon who was minister- 
ing to him, replied to his encouragement: 

" Mon Major, je suis deja avec Dieu," and 
instantly expired. 

Every regiment must have its emblem ; the 
minds of the men turn naturally to the sym- 
bolic. 

"I'd like to look at the colours," said a 
mortally wounded gunner to his Captain. 

"Look at the guns, my man, those are the 
gunners' colours !" 

And the boy was uplifted to look, till his eye 
glazed. 

We do not take the colours into action now, 
but we know what the Standard means to our 
Allies. It seems a pity that political revolution 
should have displaced the ancient lilies of 
France. There is something so grand in tradi- 
tion. Dignity of noble ancestry is not confined 

117 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

to man alone. Houses possess it, and lands, 
and surely nations. Are not our soldiers to- 
day the heirs of the yeomen and bowmen of 
Agincourt ? 

" O God of battles, steel my soldiers' hearts !" 
is the prayer on the lips of all of us ; and we feel 
through all, even as Harry the King, the same 
proud confidence in the good blood that cannot 
lie. Shall not those who stay at home " hold 
their manhoods cheap, whiles any speaks " of 
Mons, or Ypres, or — of those glories yet to 
come? 

Thus, in a way, it seems to us that if France 
fights in her body under the Tricolour, in her 
soul she is fighting under the Lilies. It is the 
old France again, the France of the days of 
faith. In one of Joan of Arc's visions she saw 
Charlemagne and St. Louis kneeling before the 
throne, pleading for the land they had loved 
and served. She who carried the Oriflamme 
may now form the third in that shining com- 
pany and look down, perhaps, considering the 
lilies growing out of the field of blood. Perhaps 
she may say : " Not Solomon in all his glory 
was arrayed as one of these." 



118 



DEATH IN THE LITTLE GARDEN 

" O Saul, it shall be 

A face like my face that receives thee, a man like to me 

Thou shalt love and be loved by for ever ! A hand like 

this hand 

Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! See the 

Christ stand." 

Robert Browning. 

March.— We bought the small place on the 
Surrey highlands and furnished it out of Rome ; 
and set statues and cypresses and vases over- 
flowing with flowers about the quaint terraces 
that run down to the valley ; and we have a bit 
of Italy between pine-woods and wild moorland. 
We have called it the Villino. 

The idea started as a week-end cottage. 
Gradually, however, we came to pay the flying 
visits to the London house and spend the most 
of our time in the country. Since the war 
began we have settled altogether on the span 
of earth which has become so endeared to us. 
Never was any home established in such a 
spirit of lightheartedness. 

The new property has been our toy ; some- 
thing to laugh at while we enjoy it. It is absurd 
and apart and beloved and attractive; and though 

119 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

the great shadow that rose in August overcast 
the brightness of the Villino garden and all its 
prospects, we could yet look out upon the 
peace and the fairness and take comfort there- 
from ; turn with relief to the growing things 
and all the innocent interests that surround 
and centre in a country life. 

It never dawned upon us that the garden 
itself could become a point of tragedy; that 
every pushing spike of bulb and every well- 
pruned rose-tree would have their special pang 
for our hearts, yet so it is. Never again shall we 
be able to look with the eyes of pure enjoyment 
on terrace and border, rose-arch and woodland. 

Adam, the kindly gardener of our special 
plot of earth, has been struck down ; hurled, 
by an inscrutable decree of Providence in the 
zenith of his activities, from life to death. 

He was as much a part of the Villino as we 
ourselves ; a just and kindly man, not yet forty ; 
one of the handsomest of God's creatures, and the 
most gentle-hearted. We cannot see the mean- 
ing of such a blow ; we can only bow the head. 

" Doesn't it seem hard," cried the daughter 

of the Villino, " that in these days there should 

be one unnecessary widow !" 

1 20 



DEATH IN THE LITTLE GARDEN 

The last time the Signora saw him alive 
was about a week before the tragedy. He 
had come into the funny little Roman drawing- 
room — all faint gay tints and flamboyant Italian 
gilt carved wood — carrying a large pot of arum 
lilies. He scarcely looked like an Englishman 
with his dark, rich colouring and raven hair 
prematurely grey; though he was so all-English, 
of England's best, in his heart and mind. 

A little Belgian child, on a visit to us, 
rushed up to him, chattering incomprehensibly. 
She is just three and very friendly; something 
in Adam's appearance must have attracted her, 
for she left everything she had been playing 
with to run to him the moment he appeared. 

This is how the Signora will always remem- 
ber him, standing, big and gentle, looking down 
at the child with those kind, kind eyes. 

There was never anyone so good to little 
animals. We used to say he was a true if 
unconscious brother of St. Francis, and loved 
all God's small folk. Never was a sick cat or 
dog but Adam would have the nursing of it. 

One would see him walking about the garden 
wheeling his barrow, with a great black Persian 
coiled round his neck like a boa. Nearly two 

121 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

years ago a little daughter was born to him 
here, to his great joy. She was always in her 
father's arms during the free hours of the day ; 
and not the least piteous incident of the tragedy 
was the way this baby, just beginning to babble 
a few words, kept calling for " Daddy, daddy," 
while he lay next door in the tiny sitting-room 
he had taken such pleasure in, like a marble 
effigy, smiling, beautiful, awful, for ever deaf 
to her appeal. 

He had been slightly ailing since an attack 
of influenza ; but on the morning of his death 
he said to his wife that he felt as if he could 
do the work of six men that day. The kind of 
cruel light-heartedness which the Scotch call 
11 being fey " was upon him. Like Romeo 
before the great catastrophe, " his bosom's 
lord sat lightly on his throne." Strange freaks 
of presentiment never to be explained on this 
side of the grave ! There are those who feel 
the shadow of approaching fatality cloud their 
spirits — we have heard a hundred instances 
of certain forebodings of death during the 
present war — but this mysterious gaiety of 
the doomed is rarer and more awful. Yet 
Adam must have had his secret sad warnings 

122 



DEATH IN THE LITTLE GARDEN 

too, for his poor wife found, to her astonish- 
ment, his insurance cards, his accounts made 
up to the end of the week on the Thursday of 
which he died, the ambulance badge he had 
been so proud of— all laid ready to her hand. 
He had set his house in order before the 
summons came. We have every reason to 
think that in a deeper, graver sense he was 
equally prepared. 

11 ' Whatever time my Saviour calls me, I shall 
be ready to go. . . .' Often and often," Mrs. 
Adam told us, as her tears fell, " he has said 
those words to me." 

Like many another active, hard-working man, 
the thought of failing health, debility, old age, 
was abhorrent to him. 

11 He never could have borne a long illness." 
Thus the widow tries to console herself — pitiful 
scraps of self-administered comfort with which 
poor humanity always attempts to parry the 
horror of an unmitigated tragedy ! 

There are strange secrets between the soul 
and God. Among the many wonders of the 
City of Light will be the simple solving of the 
riddles that have been so dark and tormenting 
to our earthly minds. From the very beginning 

123 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

of the war this honest Englishman had wanted 
to go out and serve his country. He was over 
age. His wife and two children depended on 
his labours, yet the longing never left him. 

"I doubt but I'll have to go yet," was a 
phrase constantly on his lips. 

He had joined the Ambulance Corps and, 
indeed, was on his way to that errand of mercy 
when he was stricken. Did he in those inner 
communes of the soul with God breathe forth 
his desire to give his life for his country, and 
was it somehow mystically accomplished ? For 
death smote him and he fell and lay in his blood, 
as a soldier might. Who knows that the sacri- 
fice was not accepted ? 

It was terrible for us — it seemed an un- 
believable addition to her burthen of sorrow 
for the woman who loved him — but for him it 
may have been the glory and the crown. 

When all human aid is unavailing, when 
everything that science can do to assist or 
relieve has been accomplished and fellow- 
creatures must stand aside and watch the 
relentless law of nature accomplish itself, then 
the value of religion is felt, as perhaps never 
before, even by the most devout. 

124 



DEATH IN THE LITTLE GARDEN 

Had poor Adam but belonged to the Old 
Faith the call for the priest would have been 
more urgent yet than the call for the doctor; 
we would have had the consolation of hearing 
the last Absolution pronounced over the un- 
conscious form. The soul would have taken 
flight from the anointed body, strengthened 
by the ultimate rites ; the child of the Church 
would have gone forth from the arms of the 
Church — from the arms of the earthly mother, 
to the mercy and justice of the heavenly Father. 
We did what we could, his own clergyman 
being away. Never were we more impressed 
with the value of the Sacrament of Extreme 
Unction. It is all very well to say that we 
must live so as to be ready to die ; that as the 
tree grows so shall it fall. Here are trite 
axioms that will not stand a moment before 
the facts of life and the needs of humanity. 
They make no account of the mercy of the 
Creator on one side nor of the weakness of the 
failing spirit on the other. They forget the 
penitent thief on the cross, bidden to enter 
into Paradise upon the merit of a single cry. If 
the Church of our ancestors watches anxiously 
over the whole existence of her children; if she 

125 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

hovers about the cradle, how does she not hang 
over the deathbed to catch the faintest sigh of 
repentance ; nay, how does she not " prevent " 
the least effort, pouring forth graces and sup- 
plications, anointing, absolving, pursuing the 
departing spirit beyond the very confines of 
the world, sublimely audacious, to the throne 
of God itself! 

She has caught the precious soul, for whom 
the Lord died, before the infant mind was even 
aware of its own existence. She is not going 
to be robbed of her treasure at the end, if she 
can help it. 

But our poor, dying Adam was not of this 
fold, and could have no such aid and sanctifica- 
tion for his passing. Even his afflicted wife 
quailed from the fruitless agony of witnessing 
his last moments. " Since I couldn't do any- 
thing, ma'am, it's more than I can bear." 

She went down to her cottage at the bottom 
of the garden to prepare a fit resting-place for 
the body, while in the garage the soul of her 
dearest accomplished its final and supreme act 
on earth. 

We read the great prayers to ourselves — 
those wonderful prayers commensurate in 

126 



DEATH IN THE LITTLE GARDEN 

dignity and grandeur to the awful moment. 
We cried upon the Angels and Archangels, 
upon the Thrones, the Cherubim and Seraphim; 
we bade the Patriarchs and the Prophets, the 
Doctors and Evangelists, the Confessors and 
Martyrs, the Holy Virgins and all the Saints 
of God to rush to his assistance. We suppli- 
cated that his place this day should be in peace 
and his abode in Holy Sion ; we cast his sins 
upon the multitudes of the Divine mercies, and 
strong through the merits of Christ our appeal 
rose into triumph. With confidence we sum- 
moned the noble company of the Angels to 
meet him, the court of the Apostles to receive 
him, the army of glorious Martyrs to conduct 
him, the joyful Confessors to encompass him, 
the choir of blessed Virgins to go before him. 
We conjured Christ, his Saviour, to appear to 
him with a mild and cheerful countenance. 
And, with this great name upon our lips, we 
11 compassed him about with angels, so that the 
infernal spirits should tremble and retire into 
the horrid confusion of eternal night." 

All the household, except the very young 
servants, knelt round him praying silently, 
since we did not dare obtrude our own tenets 

127 



A I I I I I I' IK IUSE in WAR M Ml' 



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A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

Yet this curious evasion of the inevitable is 
only the natural outcome of a looseness of 
theology which, while it admits the dogma of 
right and wrong, of free will and human re- 
sponsibility, hurls the perfect and the imperfect, 
the saint and the sinner alike, into the same 
heaven without an instant's transition. As 
very few now believe in hell, it is no unfair 
on}dusion to draw that the mere fact of death 
cheem, in the eyes of most people, to qualify 
ses soul for eternal bliss. It is idle to ask whaf 
becomes of the generally accepted doctrine fo 
moral responsibility, why, if all are alike and 
certain to be saved, anyone should put himselt 
to the disagreeable task of resisting temptation, 
much less strive after perfection here below; 
but failure to provide help for the dying is the 
direct consequence of the denial of future 
expiation. 

" What man is there among you who, if his 
son shall ask bread, will he reach him a 
stone?" 

The Viaticum, the bread of life, is denied to 

the passing soul, and the draught of comfort of 

devout prayer withheld from the beloved in 

the fires of expiation; but the tombstone will 

130 



DEATH IN THE LITTLE GARDEN 

be considered with loving thought, and erected 
over the insensible dust. 

The Old Faith shows a profound knowledge 
of and tenderness for the mere human side in its 
hour of anguish, even while providing for the 
paramount needs of the soul. There is one, 
one only comfort for the bereaved — to be able 
to help still, and of that they are deprived. 

II It isn't as if I could do any good," said poor 
Mrs. Adam, when she turned away from her 
husband's deathbed. 

She had the power to do such infinite good if 
she had only known it. What prayer could be 
so far-reaching as that of the cry of the wife for 
the chosen one, from whom God alone reserved 
Himself the right to part her? What act of 
resignation could be so meritorious as that of 
her who was making the sacrifice of her all ? 

II I sent down to tell them to ring the passing- 
bell," said the widow. She was eager to ac- 
complish every detail of respectful ceremony 
that had been left to her. 

The passing-bell ! Touching institution of 
the ages of belief, the call for prayers for the 
soul in its last struggle, the summons to friend 
and stranger, kindly neighbour and stray 

131 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

passer-by, the cry of the mother for the last 
alms for her child ! 

"Oh," exclaimed our daughter that night, 
reflecting on these things, " my heart burns 
when I think how the poor have been robbed 
of their faith !" 

And the mighty lesson which the ancient 
Church taught by her attitude to the dying is 
that by calmly turning the eyes of the faithful 
towards the need for preparation, the duty of 
warning the sick in time, the immeasurable 
gain of the last Sacraments as compared to the 
loss of an unfounded earthly hope, she is giving 
the only possible comfort alike to the living 
and the dying ; she is placing within reach of 
the mourners just the one factor that makes 
their grief bearable — the power of being of use. 

Mrs. MacComfort, our Irish cook, who is as 
near a saint herself as one can ever hope to 
meet, said to us, the tears brimming in her soft 
eyes: "Oh, doesn't it make us feel ashamed of 
ourselves when we see what our holy religion 
is, and how little we live up to it !" 

And, indeed, that our poor fellow-countrymen 
are so good without these helps is at once a 
wonder and a rebuke to us. Mrs. Adam made 

132 



DEATH IN THE LITTLE GARDEN 

her sacrifice with a most touching submission : 
"God must know best." 

" When they came down and told me there'd 
been an accident, my hands were in the wash- 
tub, miss," she told one of us later, "and as I 
ran up the garden drying them in my apron, 
I was praying God all the while that he would 
give me strength to bear what I might have to 
see." 

God never refuses such a prayer as that. 

Adam was an example. It is astonishing the 

effect the death of this simple gardener has 

made in the district, and the testimonies of his 

worth keep coming in. It shows how wide the 

influence one good man can exercise in any 

class of life — 

"The very ashes of the just 
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust." 

In a narrower sense we shall ourselves 
always feel that something of him has gone 
into the soil of our little garden, for which he 
worked so faithfully. Some of the fragrance 
of that humble soul will rise up from the violet 
beds and hang about the roses. 

We have been the more disposed to draw 
these parallels between the Old Faith and its 

!33 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

substitute because, by a curious coincidence, 
Adam's was the second death to fling sadness 
over the Villino. 

The first was not a personal loss, like that 
of a servant in the house. It concerned, indeed, 
a being whom only one of us had seen. It 
happened far away in the bloody swamps of 
the Yser; yet, none the less, the tidings rilled 
the little household with mourning. 

Among the many exiles flying to our shores 
from the horror of the advancing Hun were 
two young mothers with their children — two 
charming, delicately nurtured, high-born, high- 
minded women, whose husbands were, one, an 
officer in the Belgian army, the other, a volun- 
teer working in the ambulance at Calais. The 
soldier's wife, the niece of an old friend of ours, 
a gay, courageous creature, who twice had gone 
into the line of fire to see her husband, was 
never tired of speaking to us of " Charley." He 
seemed in the end to have become almost a 
familiar among us. We knew by his photo- 
graphs that he was handsome, and, by the 
portions of his letters which she read to us, 
that he was tender and deep-feeling and strong 
of courage. 

i34 



DEATH IN THE LITTLE GARDEN 

Some weeks ago Charley's wife left to live 
with her sister ; her cousin still remained with 
us. It was the latter who was sent for to the 
telephone that evening when the shadow of 
death rolled up suddenly and hung over the 
little house. 

An unforgettable moment when she turned 
from the instrument, crying in accents that 
pierced one: "Charley tue! Mon Dieu, mon 
Dieu, Charley tue 7" 

It was when we afterwards learnt the details 
of the tragedy, which were piteous in the 
extreme as far as it affected the wife, that the 
noble consolations of our religion emerged in 
all their beauty. 

The officer had announced an approaching 
leave, and the joyful anticipation of his little 
family was commensurate to the love they bore 
him. As one instance of that love, let it be 
noted here that his small son, only six years 
old, could never hear the name of his absent 
father without tears. 

The wife was alone in the garden, resting 
from the fatigues of a morning spent in pre- 
paring for that visit, when a telegram arrived, 
badly transcribed, in French. She could at 
i35 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

first only make out her husband's name, her 

brother's signature, and the words, "Shall be 

at Calais to-day." 
She danced into the house in ecstasy, crying 

to the children: "Papa is coming; papa and 

Uncle Robert are coming." 
And it was only on the stairs that a second 

glance at the sheet in her hand revealed the 

fatal word " tu&" 

A cousin — another young exiled wife and 

mother — who lived in close proximity, was 

summoned by the distracted maid, and writes 

in simple language of the scene of agony : " As 

soon as I got into the little house," she says, 

" I heard her dreadful sobs ; I ran to her. 

1 Charley is killed, Charley is killed !' she cried 

to me. I have never seen anyone in such a 

state. She was almost in convulsions. I put 

my arms about her. ' Make your sacrifice ; 

offer it up for the good of his soul,' I said to 

her. [ No, no ! I cannot,' she said. At first 

she could not, but I held her close, and after 

a little I said to her : 'Say the words after me: 

" O my God, I accept your will for the good ot 

his soul.'" And once she had said it she did not 

go back on it. From that moment she was calm." 
136 



DEATH IN THE LITTLE GARDEN 

So calm, indeed, that the unhappy young 
creature had the strength of mind to go in to 
her children, terrified at the sound of her 
weeping, and smilingly reassure them, talk 
and play with them, till their bedtime. She 
meant to start that night for Calais, and did 
not wish her little ones to know of their loss 
till her return. 

All her energies were strained to the single 
purpose — to see him once again before he was 
laid to rest. She had her desire. The journey 
was an odyssey of physical and mental pain, 
but by sheer determination she won through, 
and found her brother, who had obtained leave 
of absence from his regiment to meet her. By 
him she was conveyed to a little village at the 
back of the Belgian line, where, in a chapel 
belonging to a convent, the dead man lay. 

It had been his last day in the trenches. The 
next was to begin his brief holiday. He had 
been posted in that celebrated Maison du 
Passeur, among the slimy waters, destined to 
be the scene of one more tragedy. There was 
an alarm that certain enemy snipers were 
lurking about, and a small patrol had been 
ordered to take stock of them. 

i37 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

"I will not," said the young officer, "allow 
my men to go into danger without me." 

It was not his duty — it was scarcely even 
advisable — but he took up a soldier's carbine 
and went forth with it. He was actually taking 
aim when the sergeant beside him saw him fail 
and slowly collapse. There was, perhaps, a 
noise of cannon to confuse the man's senses, 
for he heard no shot. There was certainly no 
start or shock apparent. He called out : " Mon 
lieutenant, qiiavez vons ?" believing it was a 
sudden attack of weakness. When he went to 
his lieutenant he found that he was dead. He 
had been struck by a bullet under the eye, so 
well and truly aimed that it had instantly 
ended the young, vigorous life, as far as this 
world is concerned. The only mark on his 
calm face, when his wife saw it, was that small 
purple spot, where the wound had closed again. 

" 'Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as 
A church-door ; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve." 

We have seen a snapshot taken of him as he 
lay wrapped in his country's flag. It is a noble, 
chiselled countenance, looking younger than 
the thirty-two years of his life, set in a great 
serenity, with yet that stamp of austere renun- 

138 



DEATH IN THE LITTLE GARDEN 

ciation, of supreme sacrifice, measured and 
accepted, which we sometimes behold in the 
face of the dead. 

The whole regiment congregated in the little 
chapel the afternoon of the day which brought 
the widow to her calvary. The building was 
decorated with groups of flags, and about the 
bier were heaped the wreaths of his brother 
officers, dedicated nearly all in the same words : 

" To the comrade fallen on the field of honour," 
" To the comrade who has given his life for his 
country." 

In the midst of a profound silence the Colonel 
read LOrdre du Jour, which, by King Albert's 
command, conferred upon the fallen Guide the 
Order of Leopold — for valour — and the be- 
reaved wife was given the decoration to pin 
over the cold heart that had been so warmly 
hers. There was a muffled roll of drum, and 
all present sang the " Brabanconne." So much 
for the comfort which the world could still give. 

Next morning the funeral Mass was said at 
the altar. The bier lay at the foot of the step, 
so close that each time the priest turned round 
to say Domtnus vobiscum, his hands were up- 
lifted over the dead. And the widow and all 

i39 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

the officers of the regiment kneeling round 
received Holy Communion for, and in memory 
of, the slain. 

It is not possible — although we know her 
grief to be as ardent as was her attachment to 
him — that this widow can mourn as those who 
have no hope. 

The chaplain of the regiment told her that 
her husband had been to Confession and Holy 
Communion the morning he had entered into 
the trenches, three days before. " Have no 
fear, my child," said the priest, " he made his 
Confession as he did everything, with all his 
heart." 

Blessed religion, which across the deathbed 
shows us the heavens opening for the departed 
soul, and bids the holy angel guard even the 
grave where rests the body, hallowed for the 
resurrection ! 



140 



VI 

BABIES: CHINESE AND OTHERS 

" In how several ways do we speak to our dogs, and they 
answer us !" — Michel de Montaigne. 

The war-baby was very dear and downy when 
we first saw her. 

She is the daughter of a Chinaman (an impor- 
tant member of the household), and a neigh- 
bouring lady. The Chinaman was, in fact, so 
important that the usual matrimonial procedure 
was reversed in his case ; and the family of the 
lady made unabashed and persevering advances 
for his favour before he could be induced to 
condescend to the alliance. 

Anyone familiar with Oriental calm will not 
be surprised to learn that the potentate received 
with imperturbability the announcement that 
his lady wife was likely to present him with a 
family. It was, however, perhaps pushing 
Eastern reserve a little too far to walk away 
from his infants with every appearance of dis- 
gust, and to threaten to bite those officious 

friends who sought to extract some show of 

141 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

parental feeling from him by turning him round 
once more to confront the seething cradle-full. 

The cradle was a flat basket, in which the 
babies maintained a ceaseless movement, crawl- 
ing one over the other, with a total disregard 
of such sensitive portions of the anatomy as 
eyes and noses. They were extraordinarily 
ill matched as to size — we do not know if this 
is usual with triplets — looking more like a job 
lot of Teddy-bears than anything else. There 
was one as large as the other two put together; 
there was a very lively medium one ; and a 
very small third, who lay and feebly squirmed 
under the others vigorous toes. They all had 
beautiful black noses and little cream-coloured 
tails tightly curled over their backs. The 
intelligent reader will by this time have per- 
ceived that we are not referring to mere 
humanity. The war-babies belong to the race 
of Pekinese, being, in fact, the offspring of the 
celebrated and priceless Loki, master of the 
Villino of that name, who fame has already 
spread far and wide. 

His consort was Maud, a chestnut-haired 
lady, who, we regret to say, had already con- 
tracted a mesalliance with a highlander, to the 
142 



BABIES: CHINESE AND OTHERS 

despair of her family. We are convinced that 
the union is regarded by Loki as a mere matter 
of politics, but what Western would ever dare 
to penetrate the barrier of relentless reserve 
which the Manchu raises between his domestic 
affairs and the foreign devil ? We fear, by his 
expression and the looks of reproach with 
which he has since regarded us, that we have 
already gravely infringed his ideas of decorum 
by bringing his daughter to dwell in his house. 

She is the only daughter of the trio, the two 
extremes having run to the masculine gender. 
We chose her on account of her perkiness and 
her engaging manner of waving her paws in 
supplication or allurement. 

These little dogs have all of them more or 
less the gift of gesticulation. It is not necessary 
to teach them either to beg or pray. The 
puppy— Plain Eliza— will dance half the length 
of the room on her hind-legs, frantically im- 
ploring with her front paws the while, with a 
persistency and passion that would melt a 
heart of stone. 

The other day, when the butler walked on 
the paw of Mimosa, the Peky nearest to her in 
age, who rent the air with her yells, Plain Eliza 

H3 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

instantly rose on her hind-legs and added her 
lamentations. One can truly say that at the 
same time she wrung her paws in distress over 
her playmate's suffering. She has a very 
feeling heart. 

These two adore each other, which is a very 
good thing, because Mimosa is really a little 
Tartar. She is the first fur-child to bring dis- 
cord into the happy family at Villino Loki, and 
to break the Garden of Eden spell by which 
cats and dogs of all sizes and tempers dwell 
together in the most complete amity and sym- 
pathy. A small, imperious person of a vivid 
chestnut hue, with devouring dark eyes and 
the most approved of snub noses, we flatter 
ourselves that Mimosa will become a beauty 
when she gets her full coat. But she will not 
stand cats, still less a kitten, anywhere within 
the kitchen premises, and Mrs. MacComfort, 
the queen of those regions, has actually banished 
the beloved Kitty and her offspring to the 
greengrocer's shop in order to pander to 
Mimosa, who regarded them much as the 
honest Briton the alien Hun — something darkly 
suspicious, to be eliminated from the community 
at all costs. Mimosa, indeed, has taken matters 
144 



BABIES: CHINESE AND OTHERS 

into her own paws, as the man in the street 
has done, and Mrs. MacComfort has acted like 
the Government. Discovering the youngest 
kitten completely flattened under Mimosa — 
the latter, her mane bristling, endeavouring to 
tear off all her victim's fur — it was decided to 
remove the alien element for its own benefit. 

Harmony is now restored to kitchen do- 
minions. The other morning the young lady 
of the Villino found the two little dogs solemnly 
seated each side of the hearth, their eyes fixed 
on an infinitesimal earthenware pan which was 
simmering on a carefully prepared fire. 

" They're just watching me cooking their 
breakfast, miss," said Mrs. MacComfort in her 
soft voice. " They're very partial to chicken 
liver." 

It was sizzling appetizingly in its lilliputian 
dish. 

From the moment of Plain Eliza's entrance 
upon the scene, squirming in a basket, Mimosa 
showed a profound and affectionate interest in 
her. We were, if truth be told, a little afraid 
to trust these demonstrations, fearing they 
might be of a crocodile nature, but never was 
suspicion more unjust. The elder puppy has 

H5 l 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

completely adopted the younger one, and is full 
of anxiety and distress if she is not in her 
company. She will come bustling into the 
room, talking in her Peky way, saying as 
plainly as ever a little dog did : " Has anyone 
seen Baby? It's really not safe to let the 
child go about by herself like that." 

When she discovers her, the two small things 
kiss and embrace ; after which Mimosa abdi- 
cates her grown-up airs, and romping becomes 
the order of the day. 

The name of Plain Eliza is the one which has 
stuck most distinctively to the great Mo-Loki's 
daughter. It seemed appropriate to her, in the 
opinion of the mistress of the Villino, and arose 
out of a reminiscence of her Irish youth. There 
happened to be in Dublin society in those far- 
back days a young lady of guileless disposition, 
not too brilliant intellect, and what Americans 
would call " homely " appearance. Presenting 
herself at a reception at a house which boasted 
of a very pompous butler, and having an- 
nounced her name as Eliza Dunn, he forthwith 
attempted to qualify her with a title. 
" Lady Eliza Dunn ?" 
" No, no," quoth she. " Plain Eliza." 
146 



BABIES: CHINESE AND OTHERS 

Rumour would have it that he thereupon 
announced in stentorian tones : " Plain Eliza." 

It is not so much the uncomeliness of the 
Baby's countenance as the guileless trustful- 
ness with which she turns it upon the world 
which seems to make the name appropriate. 
Anyhow, it has come to stay. 

The little children that run about Villino 
Loki these days — war-exiles, most of them — 
have scarcely crossed the threshold before 
their voices are uplifted, calling : 

"Plain! Plain! Where is Plain Eliza?" 
And when the favourite is found there is much 
cooing and fond objurgations of: " Darling 
Plain ! My sweet little Plain ! Dear, darling, 
Plain Eliza !" 

She is the only one of the Pekies that can 
be allowed with perfect safety in the hands 
of the children. Mimosa is uncertain, and may 
turn at any moment with a face of fury, her 
whole body bristling. She is secretly very 
jealous of the children. And Loki is not un- 
certain at all. He has never hidden his dislike 
of them, and his lip begins to curl the instant a 
small hand is outstretched towards him. But 
Plain Eliza, if bored, remains patient and 
i47 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

gentle ; and however " homely " she may seem 
to her attached family, she is all beauty and 
charm in the eyes of their little visitors. 

Recently a most attractive child was for ten 
days, with her charming young mother and 
baby brother, the guest of the Villino. To con- 
sole her on departure she was promised another 
Plain Eliza, should such a one ever be 
vouchsafed the world. Her mother writes : 
" She prays and makes me pray for the 
new Plain Eliza every day, and I think fully 
expects to see her come shooting down from 
Heaven." 

A very dear child this, with a heart and 
mind almost too sensitive for her four years- 
Many delicately pretty sayings are treasured 
of her. She must have been about three when 
her first religious instruction was given her. 
It made a profound impression. For months 
afterwards she would date her experiences 
from the day of this enlightenment. 

"You know, mammy, that was before Jesus 
was born to me !" 

Her father is at the front. He has not yet 
seen his little son, the arrival of whom was 
so much desired. This baby, an out-of-the- 

148 



BABIES: CHINESE AND OTHERS 

way handsome, healthy child, is a prey to the 
terrors which it will be yet mercifully many 
years before he can understand. He cannot 
bear to be left alone a moment, and wakes from 
a profound sleep in spasms of unconscious 
apprehension. Then nothing can soothe him 
but being clasped very close, the mother's hand 
upon the little head, pressing it to her cheek. 
"He is nothing," said the doctor, "to some 
of the babies I have seen this year." It is not 
astonishing ; but how pathetic ! These little 
creatures, carried so long under an anguished 
heart, come into the world bearing the print of 
the universal mystery already stamped on their 
infant souls. 

When will the dawn arise over a world no 
longer agonized and disrupted ? When will 
the wholesome joys and the natural sorrows 
resume their preponderance in our existence ? 
Surely every man's own span holds enough of 
trouble to make him realize that here is not our 
abiding-place, and long for the security of the 
heavenly home. Perhaps it was not so. Per- 
haps we had all fallen away too much from 
faith and simplicity, and we needed this appal- 
ling experience of what humanity can inflict 

149 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

upon humanity, when Christ and His cross are 
left out of the reckoning. 

" The world has become profoundly corrupt. 
There will surely come some great scourge. 
It will be necessary to have a generation 
brought up by mourning mothers and in a 
discipline of tears," said a man of God in what 
seemed words of unbearable severity, a year 
before the war broke out. 

So it may be that we are not only fighting 
for our children, to deliver them from the 
intolerable yoke of the Hun, but that we are 
also suffering for our children, to deliver them 
from the punishment of our own sins. 

We meant to call this chapter " War-babies," 
only for the newspaper discussion which has 
made even innocence itself the subject of 
passionate and unpleasant discussion. 

There have been a good many war-babies in 
the neighbourhood as well as Plain Eliza. The 
Signorina of the Villino has already acted god- 
mother several times to infant exiles. These 
little ones, we thank Heaven, have arrived 
surprisingly jolly and unimpressed. Yet the 
poor mothers had, most of them, fled from the 

150 



BABIES: CHINESE AND OTHERS 

sound of the cannon and the menace of the 
shells, happy if they saw nothing worse than 
the flames which were consuming their homes 
and all that those homes held and meant for 
them. The Signorina is very particular that 
the girls should be called Elizabeth and the 
boys Albert, with due loyalty to a sovereignty 
truly royal in misfortune. 

" Mademoiselle," writes one young woman, 
41 I have the happiness to announce to you that 
I have the honour to have become the mother 
of a beautiful little daughter. 

She meant what she said — marvellous as it 
may seem not to regard the event in such 
circumstances as an added anguish ! 

We have heard of the birth of a child to 
a widow of eighteen— a peasant girl in Brussels 
— who was forced by the invaders not only to 
watch her father and husband and both brothers 
struck down under her eyes, but to assist in 
burying them while they were still breathing. 

"It is a very ugly little baby," writes the 
kind lady who is its godmother, " and the poor 
mother is very ill. When she gets better it 
will be a comfort to her." 

In these days, when the lid of hell has been 
151 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

taken off— as Mr. Elbert Hubbard, one of the 
victims of the Liisitania, graphically declared — 
when legions of devils have been let loose upon 
an unsuspecting world, the case of the eighteen- 
year-old peasant woman in the Brussels asile is 
by no means the most to be pitied. Her child 
will be a comfort to her. Not so will it be with 
the many unfortunate Belgian village mothers 
— to whom children are being, we hear, born 
maimed in awful testimony of the mutilations 
which the wives have been forced to witness 
deliberately inflicted on their husbands. War- 
babies, indeed ! Stricken before birth, destined 
to bear through a necessarily bitter existence 
the terrible mark of the barbarian foe. 

Let us get back to the fur children. It is 
such a comfort to be able to turn one's eyes 
upon something that can never understand the 
horror about one. 

Plain Eliza's only trick is to put her front 
paws together, palm to palm, in an attitude of 
prayer, and wave them. This is called in the 
family " making pretty paws." When the chil- 
dren plunge for her and clasp her close, the 
first cry is always : " Plain Eliza, make pretty 
paws! Dear Plain Eliza, make pretty paws !" 
152 



BABIES: CHINESE AND OTHERS 

She will not do it for them every day. Little 
dogs know very well that human puppies have 
no real authority over them. Perhaps it is 
because of the rarity of her condescension in 
this direction, or perhaps because of the 
wonderful emphasis of her supplication when 
she does so condescend, that the youngest of 
the small exiles, three-year-old Viviane, regards 
this accomplishment as the very acme of ex- 
pression. She is a pious babe, and is fond of 
paying visits to the little Oratory in the Villino. 
One day her governess observed her wringing 
and waving her dimpled hands before the altar. 
When she came out she confided in tones of 
devout triumph : " I have been making pretty 
paws to little Jesus." 

Viviane, the most satisfactory type of sturdy 
childhood it is possible to imagine, combines 
a great determination, an understanding as 
solid as her own little person, with an ex- 
tremely tender heart. She quite realizes the 
advantages of the good manners which her 
English governess inculcates, and she can 
be heard instructing herself in a deep sotto 
voce when she sits at tea with grown-up enter- 
tainers. 

1.53 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

" Vivi not speak with her mouth full. Vivi 
wait. Now Vivi can speak." 

" Good-bye, my little girl," said her mother 
to her the other day, sending the child home in 
advance to her early supper. " I hope you 
will be good." 

"Vivi good," was the prompt response, "good, 
obedient, nice manners at table." 

She walked out of the room with her pecu- 
liarly deliberate gait, murmuring the admoni- 
tion to herself. 

During the terribly dry weather in the 
beginning of May we had a great lire on our 
moor ; whether caused by incendiarism or not 
remains a moot point. The first hill that rolls 
up from our valley is now charred half-way. 
Viviane was much concerned. 

11 Poor moor burnt ! Poor moor burnt !" she 
lamented. Then, with a delicious impulse 
qualified by characteristic caution, "Vivi kiss 
it where it is not black ; kiss it and make it 
well !" 

When her cousin and playmate's father was 
tragically killed on the Yser, the little creature, 
who is devoted to her own father, was deeply 
concerned. The latter is heroically devoting 

i54 



BABIES: CHINESE AND OTHERS 

himself to ambulance work at Calais. For 
many nights after the news of the young 
officer's death was received, Viviane would 
anxiously inform everyone who came into her 
nursery that Papa was quite safe, pointing out 
his photograph on the chimney-piece at the 
same time. 

" Vivi got her Papa quite safe," in a confused 
association of ideas. 

Though she has only seen him once for a 
very short time all these nine months, the 
child's affectionate memory of him remains as 
distinct as ever, and returning the other day 
from a morning walk with a scratched knee, 
she declared pathetically she wished it had 
been a wound, for then Vivi's father would 
have had to come and nurse her. 

The spirit of the Belgian children is one of 
the most remarkable things of the war. As 
soon as they can understand anything at all 
they seem to grasp the situation of present 
valiant endurance and future glory. They 
know what sacrifices have been demanded of 
their parents. There is not a child that we 
have seen but measures the cost and its honour. 

Upon the arrival of the Faire part of that 
i55 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

same young officer above mentioned, with its 
immense black edge and unending list of 
sorrowing relatives, Viviane's eldest brother, 
a boy of nine, asked to read it. When he came 
to the words: Mort pour la patrie, he looked up, 
his face illuminated. 

" Oh, Maman, comme dest beau /" 

Not the least among the miscalculations of 
the Germans in Belgium has been their insane 
attempt to stifle the courage of the little country 
by ferocity. But Germany has never counted 
with souls, and it is by the power of the soul 
that this huge monster of materialism, with its 
gross brutality and gross reliance on masses 
and mechanism, will be overthrown. There is 
not a gamin of the Brussels streets that does 
not mock the German soldiery, finely conscious 
that, by the immortal defiance of the spirit, 
Prussian brutality itself is already vanquished. 
Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings ! . . . 

There was humour as well as heroism in the 
heart of the oppressed Antwerp Belgian on 
that afternoon of his King's birthday, when he 
sent the three little girls to walk side by side 
through the streets dressed in black, orange, 
and red. The Hun stood helpless before the 

156 



BABIES: CHINESE AND OTHERS 

passage of the living flag, not daring to face 
the ridicule which would fall upon him all the 
world over were the babes arrested and taken 
to the Commandatur. It was a superb defiance, 
flung in the face of the despot, flung by the 
little ones ! The whole history of Belgium's 
glory and Germany's shame is in it. 

It is just the feeling that they are blessedly 
ignorant of the universal suffering that makes 
the company of our pets so soothing to us 
now. 

" My dog is my one comfort," cried a friend 
to us, surveying her Peky as he sat, fat and 
prosperous, his lip cocked with the familiar 
Chinese smile, triumphant after the feat of 
having silently bitten his mistress's visitor. 
" He is the only person that hasn't changed !" 

The bite of a Pekinese does not hurt, it may 
be mentioned, and the visitor quite shared his 
owner's feelings. 

It may be something of the same sensation 
that makes the wounded soldiers in the hospital 
near us long for the forbidden joy of something 
alive for a mascot. They picked up a very 
newly hatched pheasant in the grounds the 
i57 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

other day, and carried it home to share their 
bed and board. It was fed on extraordinary- 
concoctions, and after three days was discovered 
to have passed away. There was a strong 
suspicion of the matron, who had not approved 
from the beginning. They consoled themselves 
by a military funeral. A very handsome coffin 
having been made by an expert, they went in 
solemn procession to lay the infant pheasant 
to rest. Now there is always a wreath on the 
grave. 

Invited to the Villino this week to see our 
azaleas, they arrived, a batch of twenty, at the 
odd hour of ten o'clock in the morning, to be 
regaled with buns and lemonade, no tea-parties 
being allowed. They enjoyed themselves very 
much, but the feature of the entertainment was 
Mimosa, the small ruby Pekinese. She passed 
from embrace to embrace. She licked them so 
much that they told the Sister they would not 
need to have their faces washed any more. 
This is the kind of joke that is really appre- 
ciated in hospitals. When Mimi returned to 
her devoted Mrs. MacComfort in the kitchen, 
the latter remarked " she was so above herself 
she couldn't do anything with her." 

158 



BABIES: CHINESE AND OTHERS 

Unfortunately all little dogs are not happy 
and protected like ours. Belgian friends who 
passed through villages and towns after the 
first wave of the invader had spread over the 
country tell us of a horrible and singular by- 
way of wanton atrocity. The soldiery slaughter 
the dogs wholesale, some said to eat them, but 
that seems hardly credible. Most probably it 
was part of the scheme of general terrorism. 
To burn the houses and slay the husbands and 
fathers, to spear and mutilate and trample down 
the children, to insult the women, it was all not 
enough. The finishing touch must be given 
by the murder of the humble companion, the 
faithful watch-dog, the children's pet. Piles 
and piles of dogs' heads were at the corners of 
the streets, our friend told us. 

We know they laid hold of the poor dogs to 
experiment upon them with their diabolical 
gas. But there was at least some reason in the 
latter brutality. 

One hears man}'' stories about the dogs of 
war. 

At the beginning of the conflict the trained 
ambulance dogs were reported to have done 
splendid work in the French trenches. We do 

i59 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

not know if we have any such, but we do know 
that the men have pets among them out there, 
whether mascots brought out from England or 
strays picked up from the abandoned farms. 
The deserted dogs ! A French paper published 
an article upon these dumb victims, not the 
least pathetic of the many side tragedies of this 
year of anguish. It was a poor shop-keeper 
who described what he himself had seen in 
passing through a devastated town within the 
conquered territory. 

" The dogs have remained in the town, from 
whence the inhabitants have fled. The dogs 
have remained where there is not left a stone 
upon a stone. How they do not die of hunger 
I cannot imagine. They must hunt for tnem- 
selves far out in the country-side, I suppose, 
but they come back as quickly as they can and 
congregate at the entrance of the suburb on 
the highroad. 

"There are two hundred, or three hundred 
perhaps — spaniels, sheep-dogs, fox-terriers, 
even small ridiculous lap-dogs — and they wait, 
all of them, with their heads turned in the same 
direction, with an air of intense melancholy 
and passionate interest. What are they wait- 

160 



BABIES: CHINESE AND OTHERS 

ing for ? Oh, it is very easy to guess. Some- 
times one of the old inhabitants of the town 
makes up his mind to come back from Holland. 
The longing to see his home, to know what is 
left of his house, to search the ruins, is stronger 
than all else — stronger than hatred, stronger 
than fear. And sometimes then one of the dogs 
recognizes him. His dog ! If you could see 
it. If you could imagine it. All that troop of 
dogs who prick their ears at the first sight of a 
man coming along the road from Holland, a 
man who has no helmet, a man not in uniform ; 
the instantaneous painful agitation of the 
animals who gaze and gaze with all their might 
— dogs have not very good eyes — and who sniff 
and sniff from afar, because their scent is better 
than their sight. And then the leap, the great 
leap of one of these dogs who has recognized 
his master, his wild race along the devastated 
road, ploughed with the furrows by the passage 
of cannons and heavy traction motors and dug 
with trenches ; his joyous barks, his wagging 
tail, his flickering tongue ! His whole body is 
one quiver of happiness. The dog will not 
leave that man any more, he is too much afraid 

of losing him. He will follow close to his heels 

161 m 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

without stopping to eat ; one day, two days if 
needful; and in the end he goes away with him. 
" But the others ? They have remained on 
the road. And when they see this dog depart, 
having found at last what they all are seeking, 
they lift up their muzzles despairingly and 
howl, howl as if they would never stop, with 
great cries that fill the air, and re-echo until 
there is nothing more to be seen upon the road. 
Then they are dumb, but they do not move. 
They are there ; they still hope." 



162 



VII 

OUR GARDEN IN JUNE 

" Still may Time hold some golden space 
Where I'll unpack that scented store 
Of song and flower and sky and face, 

And count, and touch, and turn them o'er." 

Rupert Brooke. 

June i. — The garden in early June! Like a 
great many other things the idea is very dif- 
ferent from the reality. The first of June in 
the garden represents to the mind's eye bowers 
of roses, exuberance in the borders, a riot of 
colour and fragrance. As a matter of fact, with 
us, in our late-blooming, high-perched terraces, 
it means a transition stage, and is annually 
very exasperating and disappointing to the im- 
patient spirit of the Signora. It is the time 
when the azaleas look dishevelled, with their 
delicate blossom hanging depressingly from 
the stamens. The forget-me-nots have all been 
cleared away, and in those places where bulbs 
are preserved against the future spring, masses 
of yellowing tangled leaf-spikes are an eyesore. 
The bedding-out plants still look tiny on the 
raw borders. All our roses, except those 
climbers against the house, are yet in the bud, 

163 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

There are just the poppies that flaunt in the 
borders; and even their colour becomes an 
exasperation, because they would have done 
so much better to wait and join in the grand 
symphony, instead of blowing isolated trumpet 
flourishes, prepared to relapse into sulky silence 
when the delphiniums strike up their blue 
music. 

There is also another frightful drawback to 
this first week of leafy June, and that is that it 
would be easier to separate Pyramus from 
Thisbe than the gardener from the vegetables. 
A constant enervating struggle goes on between 
us on the relative values of cabbages and roses, 
beans and poppies. We want the roses sprayed, 
we want the borders staked, we want susten- 
ance in the shape of liquid manure and Clay's 
fertilizer copiously administered to our dar- 
lings ; and he wants to put in " that there other 
row of scarlet runners and set out them little 
lettuces." And when it comes to watering : he 
doesn't know, he's sure, how he's to get them 
cabbages seen to as they ought to be seen to ; 
a deal of moisture they want, if they're to do 
him any justice. 

Meanwhile our terraces are panting. The 
164 



OUR GARDEN IN JUNE 

climbing roses up the house — and this year 
they would have been glorious — are pale and 
brittle in petal and foliage, as if they had been 
actually blasted. 

The master of the Villino, after due represen- 
tations from the Padrona, has seen the necessity 
of sacrifice, and assiduously waters the garden 
every evening — and himself! The hose is de- 
fective ; being war time we cannot afford a new 
one. Two jets break out at the wrong angle 
and take you in the eye and down the waist- 
coat at the most unexpected moments ; and 
though amenable to persuasion, the Padrone's 
devotion has its limits, and he positively de- 
clines the remanipulation of the tube which 
will bring it — after having done service in the 
Dutch garden — to the end of the Lily Walk. 
So that, as it is two yards short, the deficiency 
has to be made up by hand watering, and two 
obsolete bath-cans are produced out of the 
house, which seems, for some unexplained 
reason, easier than using the proper garden 
furniture. These cans are generally left, for- 
gotten, where they were last used, unless the 
piercing eye of the mistress of the Villino 
happens to dart in that direction. 

165 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

Yesterday we had visitors — in eighteenth- 
century parlance, a General and his Lady — 
and of course the two cans stood in the middle 
of the path, confidingly, nose to nose. Being 
war time nobody minded. It is the blessing 
and the danger of war time that nobody minds 
anything. And the General's Lady, being 
tactful, kept her eye on the buddleia. 

Death having come to the little garden and 
taken Adam away; and greed of gain having 
deprived us of Reginald Arthur in favour of 
the post office ; and patriotism having rendered 
the local young man as precious as he is scarce, 
we were five weeks — five invaluable, irreplace- 
able weeks — gardenerless, odd-manless at the 
Villino. Nothing this year will ever restore 
the lost time. No amount of pulling and 
straining will draw the gap together. 

Japhet, Adam's successor, is worn, as the 
Americans say, very nearly " to a frazzle." 
He is a deeply conscientious man, and peas 
and beans and cabbages are to him the very 
principles upon which all garden morality is 
built up. He was much grieved the other day 
when someone "passed a remark" on the 
subject of weeds in the back-garden. 

166 



OUR GARDEN IN JUNE 

Weeds! We should think there were! It 
was so blatantly self-evident a fact that we 
wondered that anyone should have thought it 
worth while to pass a remark upon it. But 
Japhet was hurt to his very soul : considering 
his vocation, it would perhaps be more in keep- 
ing to say — his marrow. 

Professional pride is a very delicate and 
easily bruised growth. When the Padrona was 
in her teens the whole of her mother's orderly 
establishment was convulsed one June — a 
hot June it was too — because the professional 
pride of the family butler had been wounded 
by the footman's presuming to hand a dish 
which it was not his business to touch. His 
sense of dignity was doubtless sharpened to a 
very fine edge by the fact that, the June weather 
being so hot, an unusual amount of cooling beer 
had been found necessary. This may seem a 
curious mixture of metaphors, nevertheless the 
facts are exact. 

Reilly — that was his name — was very deeply 
and, in the opinion of the rest of the household, 
justifiably incensed when Edmund lifted the 
entree dish with the obvious intention of offer- 
ing it to his mistress; and though it was re- 

167 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

garded as an exaggeration of sensitiveness for 
him to knock the footman down immediately 
after lunch in the seclusion of the pantry, to 
kneel upon his chest and endeavour to strangle 
him with his white tie; and though the cook 
deemed it incumbent upon her to draw the 
attention of the authorities to the drama by 
seizing a broom and brushing it backwards 
and forwards across the row of bells; all the 
sympathies of the establishment remained with 
Reilly, and "the mistress" was regarded as 
extremely hard-hearted for dismissing him 
from her service. The footman was a shock- 
headed, snub-nosed youth, and we will never 
forget his appearance when, released from his 
assailant, he burst into the dining-room, collar- 
less, his white tie protruding at an acute angle 
behind his left ear, with a mixture of triumph, 
importance, and suffering upon his scarlet 
countenance. 

So we were compassionate with Japhet 
when he waxed plaintive over his underling's 
house duties, and even forbore having the 
windows cleaned for several weeks, and 
endured tortures at the sight of her spattered 
panes, out of regard for his difficulties. 
1 68 



OUR GARDEN IN JUNE 

The underling is aptly named Fox. He 
has red hair and long moustaches and a fur- 
tive eye and a general air of alertness and 
slyness which show that if he had ever be- 
longed to the animal kingdom in a previous 
state of existence, Vulpus he certainly was. 
But we did not expect him to develop garden 
susceptibilities too. This, however, it seems 
he has done. 

" I've very bad news for you," said Japhet 
sombrely to his master last week, when he 
came into the long, book-lined room to receive 
his Saturday pay. He has naturally a lugu- 
brious countenance. 

His master's thoughts flew to Zeppelins, 
spotted fever, and other national dangers. 

11 Indeed, Japhet. What is it ?" 

" Fox, he says, he can't put up with the 
couch-grass and the docks in the lower garden. 
They seem to have got on his mind, like. He 
don't see how he can go on dealing with them. 
They } ave got a strong hold," concluded Japhet 
with a sigh, as if he too were overwhelmed by 
the enemy. 

Well, it was tragic enough, for the precious 
Fox had been caught after long hunting, and 

169 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

had made his own bargain — a foxy one — with 
every eye to the main chance. We want to keep 
him, but have a guilty sensation too, he being 
young and strong, and obviously the right 
stuff for enlisting; though, indeed, if docks 
and couch-grass daunt him, how would he 
stand shrapnel and gas ? 

The daughter of the house, who is extremely 
tactful, and who is generally trusted with 
delicate situations, interviewed him on the 
spot. She found him in a condition only to 
be described as one of nerve-shock. His long, 
red moustaches quivered. All he could reply, 
in a broken voice, was : 

11 It don't do me no credit. It won't never do 
me no credit." 

Japhet, consulted, gave it as his opinion that 
it was not a question of his subordinate's 
bettering himself; but said "Fox had always 
been a sensitive worker." Nevertheless, we 
should not be surprised to hear that war prices 
have something to do with it. 

It is only now, after nearly five years, that 
we are beginning to reap some benefit of our 
constant planting. The Signora wonders if 

l 7°] 



OUR GARDEN IN JUNE 

her irritable mind had allowed her to leave 
undisturbed those divers perennials and bushes 
which she had rooted up after a year's trial 
from beds and borders, how might she not now 
be gathering the reward of longanimity. 

The Leonie Lamesche roses, for instance. 
She hunted them out of the middle of the 
Dutch garden; out of the beds before the 
entrance arches into the rose-garden ; into that 
corner of the kitchen-garden where the derelicts 
gather. And just now the child of the house 
has brought into her bunch after bunch of little 
orange-crimson pompoms, delicious and quaint 
to look at, and delicious and quaint to smell, 
with their faint tartness, as of apples, mixed 
with an aromatic herbiness as of myrtles. 

"There's quantities more," says the Signorina. 
Poor little things ! they have been allowed to 
settle and spread their roots, and one would 
not know them for the nipped, disreputable, 
guttersnipe objects that hitherto called down 
the master of the Villino's scorn. 

We do not regret them in the Dutch garden 
after all. It is too near the house not to have 
its garland for every season ; and the forget-me- 
nots, hyacinths, and tulips are too precious and 

171 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

beautiful in the spring. But under the rose- 
arches now there are gaps ; and this year, be- 
tween the loss of our poor Adam and war 
scruples, these gaps have not been filled. 

If the Signora had left Leonie Lamesche 
where she was, all those nice varnished green 
leaves and all those darling rosettes of bloom 
with their odd colour and fragrance would be 
in their right place, instead of in the waste 
ground from which Japhet, with the zeal of the 
new broom, is already preparing to sweep them 
next autumn — not, be it said, with any special 
disapprobation for Leonie, but because he 
declares he wants to get rid of all that there 
stuff which hadn't no right to be in a vegetable 
garden at all. 

The moral is — as has been said long ago in 
the " Sentimental Garden " — that chief among 
the many virtues a garden inculcates is patience. 
If the Signora had had patience, she would not 
have turned all the Standard Soleil d'Or and 
Conrad Meyers out of the Lily Walk, because 
the shadow of the buddleias interfered with 
their bloom. For behold! this winter's snow 
has cast the great honey-trees sideways, and 
the united efforts of Japhet and Fox, who 

172 



OUR GARDEN IN JUNE 

pulled and propped and strained in vain, have 
left them sideways, and sideways, in the opinion 
of these experts, they will for ever after remain. 
And the Lily Walk is in full sunshine. Had 
we but left the standards, who, of course, will 
be sulky in their new positions for a couple of 
years more ! 

June 15. — The complaint begun in the first 
week of our transitional garden has already 
been reproved by the mid-month's splendours. 
In spite of the drought and the desiccating 
south-east winds (which by some inscrutable 
decree of Providence have been sent to us this 
year when so much depends upon field, orchard, 
and garden), the roses are magnificent and of 
unusual promise. 

Our peony beds — the mistress of the garden 
did know that peonies are slow ladies and will 
take their time — are beginning to reward her 
forbearance. Such a basketful as came into 
her bedroom to-day with the Polyantha roses ! 
— those large, pink, scented beauties which are 
so satisfying to settle in big bowls. We have 
put them in the chapel against boughs of the 
service-tree. The effect is all one could wish. 

The service-tree bloomed this year as never 
i73 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

it bloomed before. It looked like the bridal 
bouquet of a fairy giantess! We trust this 
daring hyperbole will enable our readers to 
represent to themselves something at once 
immense and ethereal, misty grey, and deli- 
cate silver-white. It is of huge size and 
beautiful shape, and grows a little higher on 
the slope than the greater of the two beech- 
trees. For colour effect we know nothing more 
soul-filling than the way it stands between the 
ardent tawny glories of the Azalea Walk and 
the young jewel green of its cousin — the beech 
above mentioned. Put the shoulder of the 
moor at the back in its May mantle of coppery 
mauve heather not yet in bud — that is a 
picture to gaze upon under a blue sky, thank- 
ing God for the loveliness of the earth ! 

This last May, which will be ever memorable 
as one of the most tragic months of the war, 
hazard — or that stithy tove, the alien Hun — 
provided us with a background approximately 
macabre for the radiant youthful joy. Our 
moor has been burnt — five fires started simul- 
taneously one day of high east wind, and the 
first great swelling hill is covered with a gar- 
ment as of hell. The scattered fir-trees here 

174 



OUR GARDEN IN JUNE 

and there are of a livid, scorched brown. To 
look out on the scene and see them stand in 
the slaty black, casting mysterious shadows 
under the dome of relentless brightness we 
have had of late, is like looking upon a circle 
of Dante's Inferno, out of one of the cool, 
bowery regions of his upper Purgatorio. Our 
daughter finds a wilder beauty in our blossom 
and verdure against the savage gloom beyond ; 
but not so the Padrona. She laments the 
tapestry of her peaceful, rolling heights. Now, 
past mid-June, bracken is creeping slowly 
through the charred roots of the heather, and 
she does not want a bracken hill. It is spread- 
ing democracy, taking the place of some royal 
line ; the rule of the irresponsible, the coarse, 
the mediocre ; though she grants there will be 
beauty in the autumn when it all turns golden. 
And perhaps there's a lesson to be drawn 
somewhere, but she will have none of it, for 
there is nothing so tiresome as the unpalatable 
moral. 

Fox has condescended to remain another 
week, so we need not feverishly search garden 
chronicles for the quite impossible he, who 
*75 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

shall be strong, sturdy, ineligible for the army, 
and willing to take a place as under-gardener 
at something less than the honorarium of an 
aniline dye expert ! All those who want places 
are head-gardeners, " under glass"; except 
" a young Dutchman speaking languages per- 
fectly " who fills our souls with doubt. In every 
district it is the same story; we wish we could 
think it was all patriotic ardour, but we are 
afraid that the high wages offered by camps 
and greengrocers are responsible for a good 
deal of the shortage of labour in our part of 
the world. 

One of the Villino quartette — we call our- 
selves the lucky clover-leaf — writes from Dorset 
that the)' have an aged man of past seventy-two 
who comes in to help in the flowery, bowery 
old garden of the manor-house where she is 
staying. In justice to simple rural Dorset, it 
may be mentioned parenthetically that there 
the response to the country's need has been 
extraordinary in its unanimity. So the super- 
annuated labourers who have grown white and 
wise over the soil, instead of sitting by the 
chimney-corner and enjoying their old-age 
pensions, come tottering forth to do their little 
176 



OUR GARDEN IN JUNE 

bit, in the place of the young stalwartness that 
has gone out to fight and struggle and perhaps 
die for England. 

Our Dorset clover petal writes : " Old Mason 
is very sad at having to water the borders. 
1 Ye mid water and water for days and days,' 
he declares, 'and it not have the value of a 
single night's rain. There, miss, as I did say 
to my darter last night, my Father, I says, he 
do water a deal better than I do.'" 

Yesterday there came a box of white pinks 
from that Dorset garden ; these have been put 
all together into an immense cut-glass bowl, 
with an effect of innocent, white, overflowing 
freshness that is perfect of its kind. And the 
scent of them is admirably fitted to the sweet 
clean wonder of their looks. It is a quintessence 
of all simple fragrance, a sort of intensified new- 
mown hay smell. That is another thing the 
heavenly Father has done very well — the 
delicate matching of attributes in His flower 
children. A tea-rose looks her scent, just as 
does her deep crimson sister. 

" How it must have amused Almighty God," 
said our daughter one day last winter, lifting 
the cineraria foliage to show the purple bloom 

177 n 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

of the lining which exactly matched the note 
of the starry flower, " how it must have amused 
Him to do this." 

And surely a violet bears in her little modest 
face the promise of her insinuating and delicate 
perfume. 

And if the big pink peonies had had bright 
green instead of shadowy grey foliage they 
might have been vulgar. 

And if you had put lily leaves to an iris 
instead of their own romantic sword-blades, 
how awkward and wrong it would have been ; 
whereas the lily-stalk, with its conventional 
layers, is perfection in support of the queenly 
head of the Madonna or the Auratum. It is 
not association, but recognition of a Great 
Artist, in all reverence be it said. " He hath 
done all things well." 

To come back to the walled enclosure about 
the old Dorset manor house. Here, looking 
down our wind-swept terraces, we sometimes 
hanker for; the sunny seclusion of that walled 
garden, though apparently all is not perfect 
even there, for the last message from it 
says : 

"The strong sun takes all the strength out 
178 



OUR GARDEN IN JUNE 

of the pinks after the first day or two. It has 
been very hot in the early afternoon, and as the 
garden faces west all the poor little things are 
drawn in a long slant towards the setting sun. 
Some of the long-stemmed ones have got posi- 
tive wriggles in their stalks from so much 
exercise ; it is really bad for their systems." 

In a previous letter she writes less pessi- 
mistically : 

" I can't tell you the loveliness of the garden. 
It is like Venus rising from the sea — Venus 
and her foam together — roses, pinks, sweet- 
williams, everything leaping into bloom and 
over the walls. I have given up trying to 
harmonize colours. There is nothing so wilful 
as an old garden. The plants simply walk 
about, much as our ' Pekies ' do. I planted 
nigella last year, which didn't do very well ; 
however it skipped across a path of its own 
accord this year, and there is a patch of it in a 
forbidden corner which shames the sky. One 
looks on and laughs helplessly, as one does 
with ■ Pekies.' " 

The Penzance briar hedge dividing the 
new rosary from the reserve garden promises 

179 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

very well. It is already breaking into many 
coloured stars, carmine, pink, amber, and the 
fashionable khaki. Is this the musk-rose of 
the " Midsummer Night's Dream "? 

To contradict our statement of a page or two 
back, the Creator has made here one of the 
exceptions to His rule of rich and delicate 
balance, and it is the unsuspected fragrance of 
the sweetbriar that adds so extraordinarily to 
its attraction in a garden. No one would credit 
it with the scent, its evanescent fragile bloom 
gives no indication of it. And, like the per- 
fectly saintly, its fragrance has nothing to do 
with youth or beauty. You pass an unimpor- 
tant-looking green bush, and all at once you 
are assailed with the breath of Heaven. There 
is a mystery, almost a mysticism, about the 
perfection of this sweetness, this intangible, 
invisible beauty. One is reminded of Words- 
worth's lines : 

" quiet as a nun 
Breathless with adoration." 

It is the image of a pure soul exhaling itself 
before God, in a rapture of ecstatic contempla- 
tion. 
The June scents of the Villino garden are 
1 80 



OUR GARDEN IN JUNE 

very wonderful, peculiarly so this year, 
under the searching brilliancy of the unclouded 
heavens. There is the sweetbriar, and there 
are the pinks, and there is one long border all 
of nepeta — against the Dorothy Perkins hedge 
still only green — with its pungent, wholesome 
savour. And there is the gum cistus, that 
smells exactly as did the insides of the crimson 
Venetian bottles which stood in the great 
white and blue and gold drawing-room in the 
Signora's Irish home. It was an old custom to 
put a drop of attar of roses at the bottom of 
these favourite ornaments in those days when 
the Signora was a little girl, and it was one of 
her great jo3^s to be allowed to lift the stopper 
and sniff. The strange far-off Eastern incense 
that hangs about the rather uncomely straggling 
shrub — another instance of the Almighty's ex- 
ceptions — brings the mistress of the Villino 
back with a leap to her childhood; to the late 
Georgian drawing-room, with its immense 
plate-glass windows hung with curtains of 
forget-me-not blue brocade which cost a hun- 
dred pounds a pair — people spent solid money 
then for solid worth ; the white marble chim- 
ney-piece, with its copy of a fraction of the 

181 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

Parthenon frieze — Phaeton driving his wild, 
tossing horses; the immense cut-glass chande- 
lier sparkling and quivering with a thousand 
elfin rainbow lights ; the white and gold panels, 
the plastered frieze of curling acanthus leaves ; 
and the smiling face of the adored mother look- 
ing down upon the little creature in the stiff 
pique frock, who was the future Padrona. No 
child analyzes its mother's countenance. It is 
only in later years that the beauty of that smile 
was recognized by her. It was a beauty that 
endured to the very last of those eighty-five 
years of a life that was so well filled. It was 
a smile of extraordinary sweetness and, to 
that end, full of youth. That's what the gum 
cistus brings back; a fragrance of memory, 
poignant and beloved. Everyone knows that 
through the sense of smell the seat of memory 
is most potently reached. The merest whiff 
of a long-forgotten odour will bring back so 
vividly some scene of the past that it is almost 
painful. It is to be wondered why ghosts do 
not more often choose this form of return to 
the world. The story told by Frederick Myers 
in his " Human Personality " of the phantom 
scent of thyme by which a poor girl haunted 
182 



OUR GARDEN IN JUNE 

the field where she had been murdered is, 
we believe, unique ; but we know another 
record. This was not the struggle of any 
reproachful shade to bring itself back to human 
recollection, but the ghost of a fragrance itself. 
The late Bret Harte told the tale to a friend 
of ours. On a visit to an old English castle he 
was lodged in a tower room. Every afternoon 
he used to withdraw for literary labours, and 
at a certain hour the whole of the old chamber 
would be filled with the penetrating vapour of 
incense. He sought in vain for some explana- 
tion of the mystery. There was nothing within 
or without, beneath or above, which could pro- 
duce such a phenomenon. Then he bethought 
himself of investigating the past, and found 
that his room was exactly over what had once 
been the chapel in the days of our ancient 
Faith, and that it had been the custom to cele- 
brate Benediction at the hour when the in- 
cense — that wraith of a bygone lovely worship 
— now seemed to surround him. 

A few steps beyond the gum cistus the 
buddleia trees this June have their brief splen- 
dour of bloom and their intoxication of per- 
fume. It is as if all the honey of clover and 

183 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

gorse, with something of a dash of clove spice, 
was burning in a pyre of glory to the sunshine. 
What wonder that the bees gather there and 
chant the whole day long ! Happy bees, drunk 
with bliss in the midst of their labour! 

It is all very well to speak of bees as a frugal, 
hard-working community, to hold them up to 
the perpetual emulation of the young. Few 
people seem to remember how extremely 
dissipated they become when they come across 
a good tap of honey. Who has not seen them 
— so charged with the luxuriance that they can 
scarcely stagger out of the calyx — buzz away, 
blundering, upon inebriated wing ? 

Greatly favoured by Nature, the bees com- 
bine the extreme of laudable activity with the 
extreme of self-indulgence. Anyone who wants 
to hear their paean of rapture at its height, let 
him provide them with Buddleia globosa. 

We have by no means exhausted the list of 
scents in the June garden. There are the 
irises ! All Florence is in the sweetness that 
flows from them : a sweetness, by the way, not 
adapted to rooms, where, to be unpoetical, it 
assumes something faintly catty. The way the 
perfume of irises rolls over Florence in May is 
184 



OUR GARDEN IN JUNE 

something not to be described to anyone who 
has not breathed it. We were once the guests 
of a kindly literary couple, who dwelt in one of 
those charming, quaint, transmogrified farm- 
houses outside the city that makes us — even 
we who own the Villino Loki — hanker. It was 
called Villa Benedetto. One drove out from 
Florence along a road now only vaguely 
remembered. It skirted the river, and there 
were wild slopes on one side and poplar-trees ; 
then one darted aside into the Italian hills and 
up a steep ascent — this vision is also vague ; 
but we remember the little garden-gate and 
the narrow brick path and the irises ! Irises 
and China roses ! It is a lovely mixture for 
colour ; and as for scent ! anyone who knows 
anything about scent (and we wonder why 
there are not artists in it, as well as for music 
and painting) anyone who knows anything 
about scent, we repeat, is quite aware that 
orris, the pounded iris root, is the only possible 
fragrance to keep constantly about. It com- 
bines the breath of the mignonette and the 
subtle delight of the violet. It preserves, too, 
its adorable freshness of impression. You 
never sicken of it, you never tire of it. Of course 

185 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

it has the fault of its delicacy, it is evanescent ; 
but, then, it is never stale. Any woman who 
wishes an atmosphere of poetry should use 
nothing but orris, the pure pounded root with- 
out any addition, and that perpetually renewed. 
Precious quality, it cannot be overdone. 

The odour of the flower itself in the sunshine 
is a different thing, far more piercing and far 
more pronounced. It must be enjoyed in the 
sunshine, or after a spring storm. Those other 
incomparable banquets to the sense which a 
bean-field or a clover-meadow will spread for 
you cannot be captured and refined in the same 
manner. More's the pity ! 

Lafcadio Hearn declares that human beings 
have lamentably failed to cultivate the rich 
possibilities of the sense of smell. In this 
respect, he says, dogs are infinitely superior. 
Who can tell, he asks, what ecstasy of combina- 
tion, what chords, what symphonies of harmony 
and contrast, might we not be able to serve 
ourselves ? But we do not think the idea will 
bear development, and certainly many suffer 
enough from an over-sensitiveness of nostril 
already to prevent them from desiring any 
further cultivation of its powers. 

1 86 



OUR GARDEN IN JUNE 

The Villino in June smells very good, how- 
ever, and that is gratifying. And to complete 
the catalogue there are the new pine shoots 
delicious and aromatic, stimulating and healthy ; 
a perfect aroma on a hot day. 

"Tell me your friends and I will tell you 
what you are," says the sage ; it sounds like a 
dog, but the Padrona feels that with one sniff 
she can sum up a character. 

When Trefle Incarnat, or its last variant, 
takes you by the throat, you needn't look to 
see what kind of young woman is sitting beside 
you at the theatre. 

And when a portly friend, resplendent in 
gorgeous sables, heralds her approach with a 
powerful blast of Napthaline, you know the 
kind of woman she is, and that the word 
"friend," just written, is misapplied; for you 
never could make a friend of anyone so stuffily 
and stupidly careful. 

And when you go to tea with an acquaint- 
ance — probably literary, living in Campden 
Hill and fond of bead blinds — and the smell 
of joss-stick floats upon the disgusted nostril 
from the doorway, you know the kind of party 
you are going to have. Your hostess will 

187 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

have surrounded herself with long-haired and 
dank-handed young men, the Postlethwaites of 
the period, and brilliant young females who 
wear a mauvy powder over rather an un- 
washed face, and curious garments cut square 
at the neck, and turquoise matrix ear-rings, 
very much veined with brown ! Besides the 
joss-sticks there is cigarette smoke, and the 
atmosphere, morally as well as physically, is 
fusty ! 

Then there is the female who produces a 
bottle of Eau-de-Cologne on board ship. If 
it isn't a German governess, it is a heated 
person with something purple about her and 
kid gloves — why pursue the horrid theme ! 

Let us end this divagation by a little 
anecdote as true as it is charming. It 
happened to a member of our own family. 
She was hurrying along one foggy November 
morning to the Brompton Oratory rather 
early; and the dreadful acrid vapour and 
the uncertain struggle of a grimy dawn con- 
tended against the glimmer of the gas-lamps. 
As she approached the steps of the church 
somebody crossed her, and instantly the whole 
air was filled with an exquisite fragrance as of 



OUR GARDEN IN JUNE 

violets. Involuntarily she started to look round, 
and her movement arrested, too, the passer-by. 
For a second they stood quite close to each 
other, and to our relative's astonishment she 
saw only a small, meek-faced old lady in an 
Early Victorian bonnet wrapped in a very 
dowdy dolman. 

The old lady gave a little smile and went her 
way. There was certainly no adornment of 
real violets about her, and to look at her was 
enough to be assured that artificial scents 
could never approach her. 

The incident seemed strange enough to be 
worth making investigations, and the ex- 
planation was simple. The little old lady 
was very well known ; mother of priests, a 
ceaseless worker among the poor ; nearly 
eighty, and every day at seven o'clock Mass. 
Many people had remarked the scent of violets 
about her, and her friends thought, laugh- 
ingly, it was because she was something of a 
saint. 

This sweet-smelling saint died as she had 
lived. She had received the Last Sacraments ; 
she knew her moments were numbered, but 
she sat up, propped by pillows, and went on 

189 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

knitting for the poor till the needles fell from 
her hands. 

If the story of the violets had not happened 
to a member of the family, the Signora would 
be quite ready to believe it on hearsay, because 
of the delicious simplicity and certain con- 
fidence of that placid deathbed. 



190 



VIII 

OUR BLUE-COAT BOYS 

" lis ont le bras en echarpe, et un bandeau sur l'oeil, 
Mais leur ame est legere et ils sourient . , . 
lis s'en vont, grises de lumiere, 
Etourdis par le bruit, 
Trainant la jambe dans la poussiere 
Le nez au vent, le regard rejoui . . ." 

Cammaerts. 

We asked them to tea ; the Sister said that " the 
Matron said they couldn't do that " ; but they 
could come for morning lunch about half-past 
ten o'clock, and have bread-and-butter and see 
the garden. And they would like to come 
very much indeed, preferably next day. The 
Matron further opined about twelve would 
feel well enough to avail themselves of our 
hospitality. 

It gave us very little time for preparation, 
and the baker declined to provide us with buns 
so early. But it was very hot, fortunately ; so 
Mrs. McComfort set to work at dawn to pre- 
pare lemonade and fruit salad, and immense 
slices of bread-and-jam. And we were very 
glad she had been so lavish in her Irish 

191 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

generosity when we heard the sound of voices 
and the tramping of feet in the courtyard : it 
seemed as if there were a regiment of them ! In 
reality there were only twenty — twenty smiling, 
stalwart " blue-coat boys." Some with an arm 
in a sling ; two or three limping along with the 
help of a stick ; one with a bandaged head ; 
three, in spite of a brave front, with that look 
of strain and tragedy in the eyes which stamps 
even those who have been only slightly 
"gassed." 

They are very much amused at the little 
outing, as pleased and as easily diverted as 
children, not anxious to talk about their ex- 
periences, but answering with perfect ease and 
simplicity any question that is made to them 
on the subject. They are chiefly excited over 
our little dogs. We wish that we had twenty 
instead of only three ; or that we had borrowed 
from a neighbour's household for the occasion. 
Every man wants to nurse a dog, and those 
who have secured the privilege are regarded 
with considerable envy by the others. 

The younger members of the famiglia are 
in a desperate state of excitement, and there is 
a great flutter of aprons, and cheeks flame 
192 



OUR BLUE-COAT BOYS 

scarlet under caps pinned slightly crooked in 
the agitation of the moment. 

Miss Flynn the housemaid, Miss O'Toole 
the parlourmaid, are stirred to rapture to dis- 
cover an Irish corporal, wounded at Ypres. 
We think they talk more of Tipperary — it really 
is Tipperary — than of Flanders. Miss Flynn, 
a handsome, black-eyed, black-haired damsel, 
with a colour that beats the damask roses on 
the walls of the Villino, has been born and 
bred in England. She is more forthcoming 
than Miss O'Toole, who has the true Hibernian 
reserve ; who looks deprecatingly from under 
her fair aureole of hair, and expects and gives 
the utmost respectfulness in all her relations 
with the opposite sex. 

They say this lovely sensitive modesty of the 
Irish girl is dying out. The penny novelette, 
the spread of emancipation and education — 
save the mark! — facilities of communication, 
have done away with it. More's the pity if 
this be true, for it was a bloom on the woman- 
hood of Ireland no polish can replace ; it added 
something incommunicably lovable to the grace 
of the girls, something holy, almost august, to 
the tenderness of the mothers. 

193 o 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

When the Signora was a child in Ireland the 
peasant wife still spoke of her husband as 
" the master "; and in the wilds of Galway, 
quite recently, she has seen the women in the 
roads pull their shawls over their faces at the 
approach of a stranger. The humble matron 
of the older type will still walk two paces 
behind her husband. These are, of course, but 
indications of the austere conception of life 
which an unquestioning acceptance of her faith 
kept alive in the breast of the Irishwoman. 
When she promised to love and honour him, 
the husband became de facto "the master." 
Yet the influence of the Irish wife and mother 
in her own home in no way suffered from this 
conception of her duty. She was as much 
"herself" upon the lips of her lord as he 
"himself" upon hers. It used to be a boast 
that the purity of the Irish maiden and the 
Irish mother was a thing apart, inassailable. 
The Signora's recollections of Ireland, of a 
childhood passed in a country house that kept 
itself very much in touch with its poor neigh- 
bours and dependants, bring her back many 
instances of drunkenness among the men, alas ! 
and the consequent fights and factions ; of 
194 



OUR BLUE-COAT BOYS 

slovenliness among the women, and hopeless 
want 01 thrift and energy; in one or two 
instances, indeed, of flagrant dishonesty; but 
she never remembers a single occasion marked 
by the shocked whisper, the swift and huddled 
dismissal, or any of the other tokens by which 
a fall from feminine virtue is mysteriously 
conveyed to the child mind. 

Among all the poor cottage homes, the 
various farms, great and small, prosperous 
or neglected, each with their strapping brood 
of splendid youth, never one can she recollect 
about whose name there was a silence ; never 
a single one of these dewy-eyed, fresh-faced 
girls that did not carry the innocence of their 
baptism in the half-deprecating, half-confident 
looks they cast upon " the quality." 

Naturally there must have been exceptions ; 
and naturally, too, this state of affairs could 
not have applied to some of the more miserable 
quarters of the towns. Nevertheless, the Ireland 
of a quarter of a century ago had not forgotten 
she had once been called the Island of Saints ; 
and her mothers and daughters kept very 
preciously the vestal flame alive in their pure 
breasts. 

i95 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

Times have changed, and mores the pity, as 
we have said. But now and again a flower 
blooms as if upon the old roots, and though 
Mary O'Toole is transplanted to England, we 
trust that she may keep her infantile innocence 
and her exquisite — there is no English equi- 
valent— pudeur. 

It was a picture to see her in her cornflower- 
blue cotton frock, with her irrepressible hair 
tucked as tidily as nature would allow beneath 
her white cap, staggering under the weight of 
a tray charged with refreshments for the 
wounded. She is about five-foot nothing, with 
a throat the average male hand could encircle 
with a finger and thumb, but among the twenty 
soldiers, all of different ages, classes, and, of 
course, dispositions, who visited us that day, 
there was not one but regarded her with as 
much respect as if she had been six foot high 
and as ill-favoured as Sally Brass — we hope, 
however, with considerably more pleasure. 

When the blue-coat boys have been duly 
refreshed, they wander out into the garden. 
They remind one irresistibly of a school, and 
there is something tenderly droll in their com- 
plete submission to the little plump sister, who 
196 



OUR BLUE-COAT BOYS 

orders them about with a soft voice and certain 
authority. 

"No. 20, come out of the sun. No. 15, I'd 
rather you didn't sit on the grass." 

Then she turns apologetically to us : " It 
isn't that I don't know it's quite dry." (We 
should think it was, on our sandy heights, 
after five weeks' drought !) " But I never know 
quite where I am with the gassed cases. That's 
the worst of them. They're perfectly well one 
day, and we say, ' Thank goodness, that's all 
over,' and the next day its up in his eyes, 
perhaps !" 

14 I'll never be the same man again," suddenly 
exclaims a short, saturnine young Canadian, 
who has not — a marked exception to the others 
— once smiled since he came, and who keeps 
a dark grudge in his eyes. He seems perfectly 
well, except for that curious expression, to our 
uninitiated gaze, but his voice is weak and 
there is a langour about his movements extra- 
ordinarily out of keeping with his build, which 
is all for strength, like that of a young Hercules. 

"Ill never be the same man again; I feel 
that. It's shortened my life by a many years. 
So it has with them over there." He jerks his 
197 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

thumb towards his comrades in misfortune. 
M They'll none of them ever be the same men 
again." 

The Signora tries feebly to protest, but the 
nurse acquiesces placidly. It is the hospital 
way, and not a bad way either ; misfortunes 
are not minimized, they are faced. 

The Signora has an unconquerable timidity 
where other people's reticences are concerned, 
and was far from emulating the amiable 
audacity of a close relative — at present on a 
visit to the Villino — whose voice she hears 
raised in the distance with query after query : 
" Where was it ? In your leg? Does it hurt? 
Do you mind ? Do you want to go back again?'* 
But when she sees that the men indubitably 
like this frank attack, and respond, smiling and 
stimulated, the silence of her Canadian begins 
to weigh* upon her. She tries him with a 
bashful question : 

" Is your home in a town in Canada ?" 

" No, not in a town. Three hundred and 
eighty miles away from the nearest of any 
importance." 

"Oh, dear! Then it must take you a long 
time to hear from your people." 

198 



OUR BLUE-COAT BOYS 

The young harsh face darkens. 

The post only comes to his home out yonder 
once a week, anyhow, but he hasn't heard but 
once since he left. Not at all since he came to 
England wounded. 

" Oh, dear !" exclaimed the Signora again, 
scenting a grievance. " But if it's so far away, 
you couldn't have heard yet." 

The lowering copper-hued countenance — it is 
curiously un-English, and reminds one vaguely 
of those frowning black marble busts in the 
Capitol : young Emperors already savagely 
conscious of their own unlimited power — takes 
a deeper gloom. 

He could have heard. No. 9 had had a letter 
that morning, and his home was forty miles 
further north. 

" Had No. 9 a letter?" asks the little Sister. 

She sits plump and placid in her cloak, and 
looks like a dove puffing out her feathers in 
the sunshine. We have said she has a cooing 
voice. 

" Yes, he had," says the Canadian, and digs a 
vindictive finger into the dry grass. 

The Signora, fearing the conversation is 

going to lapse, plunges into the breach. 

199 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

11 What was your work at home ? Farming, 
I suppose." 

This remark meets with an unexpected 
success. The poor, fierce eyes — that seem 
never to have ceased from contemplation of 
unpardonable injury since that day at Ypres 
when the fumes of hell belched up before 
them — brighten. 

" Wa-al ! I do sometimes this and sometimes 
that. I can do most things. It's just what I 
happen to want to put my hand to. I'm master 
of half a dozen trades, I am. I've been on the 
farm, and I'm a blacksmith, and an engineer 
on the railway; and a barber, and a butcher." 

" Dear me !" says the little Sister. 

Her gaze is serenely fixed on the smiling 
green path. From the shadow in which we 
sit, it leads to a slope out into the blaze of the 
sunshine, where a cypress-tree rises like an 
immense green flame, circled with a shimmer 
of light. But perhaps her tone conveys rebuke, 
for our Canadian suddenly relapses into silence, 
from which we cannot again entice him. 

A little further away a friend who is staying 
with us, and the relative above mentioned, are 
listening with intense interest to the talk of a 
200 



OUR BLUE-COAT BOYS 

tall, black-moustached soldier. His face is 
very pale under its bronze ; he is the worst 
of the three gas victims who have come to-day. 
It is only what are called the very slight cases 
that are treated in the hospital close by. 

A much older man this, who has been many 
years in the army and came over with the 
Indian division. He has a gentle, thoughtful 
face. There is no resentment in his eyes — 
only the look of one who has seen death very 
close and does not forget — and a great languor, 
the mark of the gas. He is talking very dis- 
passionately of our reprisals. 

11 Oh yes, we have used our gas, the freezing- 
gas ! But it don't seem hardly worth while. 
It draws their fire so." Then, with an every- 
day smile and no more emotion in his tone 
than if he were descanting on a mousetrap, he 
goes on to describe the incredibly sudden effect 
of what he calls the freezing-gas, which we 
suppose to be the French Turpinite. " It 
freezes you up, so to speak, right off on the 
spot. You see a fellow standing, turning his 
head to talk to a fellow near him. He lifts 
his hand, maybe, in his talk like ; then comes 
along the gas, and there he stands. You think 
201 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

he's going on talking. He's frozen dead, his 
arm up, looking so natural-like, same as might 
be me this minute. Oh, it's quick ! what you 
call instantaneous. But it ain't 'ardly worth 
while. The Germans, you see, it draws their 
fire so. Two or three times we got it in among 
our own men — oh, by mistake, miss, of course !" 
This in response to the horrified ejaculation of 
his interlocutor. " And that didn't seem 'ardly 
worth while." 

Beyond this group, again, the daughter of the 
house, seated on a croquet-box, is surrounded 
by three sprawling blue soldiers. One of them 
is talking earnestly to her. The others are 
so much engaged in a game of " Beggar my 
Neighbour" with three -year -old Vivi, the 
Belgian baby, that they do not pay the 
smallest attention to their companion, and yet 
what he is saying is horrible enough, startling 
enough, God knows ! The speaker is a fair, 
pleasant-looking boy with a cocked nose, tightly 
curling auburn hair, and an air of vitality and 
energy that makes it difficult to think of him 
as in anything but the perfection of health. 
He is a territorial, and evidently belongs to 
that thinking, well-educated, working class 

202 



OUR BLUE-COAT BOYS 

that has made such a magnificent response to 
the country's call. 

" No, miss, we are not taking many prisoners 
now. No, we're not likely to. Well, think of 
our case. Just one little bit out of the whole 
long line. They caught our sergeant — the 
sergeant of my company. We were all very 
fond of him. Well, miss, they put him up 
where we could all see him— top of their trench 
—and tortured him. Yes, miss, all day they 
tortured him in sight of us, and all day we 
were trying to get at them and we couldn't. 
And when in the evening we did get at them, 
he was dead, miss. We were all very fond of 
him. We weren't likely to give much quarter 
after that. And our officers "—here he smiles 
suddenly— " well, miss, we're Territorials, you 
see. Our officers just let us loose. We're 
Territorials," he repeated. " They can't keep 
us as they keep the regulars. Not in the same 
military way. No, miss, we didn't give much 
quarter !" 

Our daughter groans a little. She under- 
stands, she sympathizes, yet she regrets. She 
would like our men to be as absolutely without 
reproach as they are without fear. 

203 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

" But you wouldn't bring yourself down to 
the level of the Germans," she says; "you 
wouldn't cease doing right because they do 
wrong?" 

He fixes her with bright blue eyes, and they 
are hard as steel. 

" Your British blood will boil," he says 
slowly. 

It seems impossible to associate such a dark 
and awful tragedy with this slim English boy 
and his unconquerable air of joyous youth. 
The Signorina remembers the repeated phrase, 
11 We were all very fond of him," and she 
sickens from the thought of that hellish picture 
of cruelty and agony on one side, of the im- 
potent grief and rage on the other. 

To change the subject, she says : 

" How were you wounded ?" 

And then it transpired he had been carrying 
in the British wounded at the end of that 
day. He had been hit in the leg without 
knowing it, and just as he was starting off to 
help to carry in the German wounded, he 
collapsed. 

To help to carry in the German wounded! 
Those Germans who had tortured his own 
204 



OUR BLUE-COAT BOYS 

comrade all day ! Dear Tommy ! Dear, 
straight, noble, simple British soldier! How 
could one ever have mistrusted your rough 
justice or your Christian humanity ? 

Real boy that he is, he warms up to the glee 
of narrating his audacities when out at night 
with a party on listening-post duty. 

" Rare fun it was," he declares. 

He used to creep up to the enemy's trench 
and bayonet what came handy. 

" I couldn't fire, you see, miss, nor do any- 
thing likely to make a noise, so it had to be 
done on the quiet. But I got a good many 
that way." 

Baby Vivi is tired of her game of cards. For 
a while past she has been amusing herself by 
boxing the two sitting soldiers. Very well- 
delivered vigorous thumps she applies on their 
chests with her little fists, and they obligingly 
go over backwards on the grass. She now 
comes to exercise her powers on the Terri- 
torial. He catches her in his arms. 

The men all look at the little girl with strange, 
troubled, tender eyes. One knows what is at 
the back of their thought. One of them ex- 
presses it presently. 

205 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

To think that anyone could ever hurt a 
little creature like that !" 

Vivi's young mother sits with her small 
group further away. She has told them how 
she has fled out of her castle in the Ardennes 
at dawn, without having had time even to pack 
her children's clothes. They had thought 
themselves safe with the pathetic hopefulness 
that filled poor Belgium from the moment 
when the French troops and the English ap- 
peared in strength upon the soil. " Now all is 
well," they said ; " now we are safe." 

A French General and his staff lodged in the 
chateau, and the men camped in the park. On 
the vigil of the day fixed for their intended 
advance, the General took her on one side. An 
old man, he had been through the whole of the 
war of '70. He solemnly warned her of the 
folly of remaining in her home, as she intended. 

" Madame, I know the Germans. I know ot 
what they are capable. I have seen them at 
work ; I have not forgotten." 

Should the invader reach a certain point 
within ten miles of the district she must fly. 

All that night the aviators kept coming 
with messages, and in the early dawn they 
206 



OUR BLUE-COAT BOYS 

started. She was up and saw the cavalcade 
winding away through the park. She stood in 
the porch to wish them God-speed. The young 
men were full of ardour. They were going 
forth to meet the enemy. The General was 
grave. When he had reached the public road, 
he sent one of his aide-de-camps riding back at 
a gallop. Was it a premonition of disaster, or 
had secret news reached him by some emissary 
from the field of conflict ? The message to her 
was, that she was to be gone at once with her 
family. At once ! 

The young husband had already departed at 
break of day in their automobile. He and his 
machine had been offered to the service of the 
country and accepted. The mother, with her 
four little children — among them the sturdy, 
two-year-old Viviane — had to walk to the 
station, with what luggage could be got together 
and trundled down in a wheelbarrow. Luckily 
it was not far — their own station just outside 
the park-gates. They got the last train that 
ran from that doomed spot. The German guns 
were within earshot as they steamed away. 

In their hurry they had forgotten to bring 
any milk or water for the baby girl. The heat 
207 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

was suffocating. The only thing that could be 
laid hold of was a bottle of white wine which 
someone had thrust into a bag. Vivi clamoured, 
and they gave her half a glassful in the end. 
She enjoyed it very much, and it did not dis- 
agree with her at all. 

The men in their blue garb listen to some of 
this story with profound attention. They have 
a very touching, respectful, earnest way of 
talking to the Belgian lady, and are very 
anxious to impress upon her that soon they 
will have her country cleared of the enemy. 

" You tell her that, miss. She do believe it, 
don't she ? We're going to sweep them out in 
no time. Tell her that, miss. That's what 
we're over there for. She'll soon be able to 
get back there — back in her own home." 

One of them gazes at her for a while in a 
kind of brooding silence, and then says huskily : 

" Isn't it a mercy }^ou got away, ma'am — you 
and your little children !" 

He knows. He has seen. 

Then Viviane is called upon to sing 
"Tipperary." 

Though only just three, this child, as has 
been said before, she looks a sturdy four. The 
208 



OUR BLUE-COAT BOYS 

most jovial solid, red-cheeked, blue-eyed, 
smiling, curly -haired little girl that it is 
possible to imagine. Her mother says that 
she never lost her balance and tumbled down 
even when she first began to toddle; and one 
can well believe it. There is a mixture of 
strength and deliberation in everything she 
does that makes one regret she is not a boy. 
But she has pretty, coaxing, coquettish ways 
that are quite feminine. 

She now puts her head on one side, and 
ogles with her blue eyes first one soldier and 
another, and smiles angelically as she pipes 
"Tipperary." 

This is a favourite song among the infant 
population these days. The child of a friend 
of ours calls it her hymn, and sings it in 
church. 

There is something really engaging in Vivi- 
ane's roll of the "r's." Her Tipperary is very 
guttural and conscientious, and her " Good-bye, 
Piccadeely" always provokes the laughter of 
admiration. 

Encouraged by applause, she bursts into, 
"We don't want to lose you, but we think 
you ought to go." And is quite aware, the 
209 p 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

little rogue, of the effect she will presently 
produce when, upon an incredibly high note, 
she announces, " We will keess you." 

After this, she breaks into piety with, " Para- 
dise, oh ! Paradise." 

The little plump nurse gets up and shakes 
out her cloak. It is getting quite late, and they 
must go back to the hospital. She marshals 
her charges up on the terrace. They obey her 
just as if they were very good little boys in 
charge of their schoolmistress. 

" Now say good-bye, and thank you. I'm 
sure you've all enjoyed yourselves. No. 20, 
where's your hat? Go down and get your 
hat, No. 20. No; his poor leg's tired. You 
go down and get it, No. 13." 

"I seen it a while ago," No. 13 announces 
obligingly. 

They say " good-bye " and " thank you " with 
the conscientiousness of their simple hearts. 
We shake, one after the other, those out- 
stretched hands that grip back so cordially. 

A guest of the Villino — an honoured guest, 

who is not only one of the most distinguished 

women artists of the day, but has lived all her 

married life within soundof the drum; who 

210 



OUR BLUE-COAT BOYS 

has been always inspired by the sights and 
scenes, the high glories and noble disasters of 
warfare — expresses the feeling struggling in 
our hearts as she retains the hand of the last 
of the file of blue-coats in hers : " What an 
honour to shake the hand of a British soldier!" 
We hear them troop away through the little 
courtyard, laughing and talking. We think, as 
the small nurse said, that they have had a 
pleasant time. 

One of the small side amusements in life is 
to hear other people's reflections upon ex- 
periences that one has lived through together, 
and to measure the distance that lies between 
different points of view. It makes one realize 
how extraordinarily difficult it must be to 
obtain reliable evidence. 

A neighbour has obligingly come in to help 
us with the entertainment. She is the pleasant, 
middle-aged Irish widow of an Irish doctor, 
and her good-humour is as pronounced as her 
brogue. Finding herself alone on the terrace 
with the Signorina after the departure of the 
convalescents, she mystified her with the 
following remark : 

211 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

" How frightened the poor old lady was !" 

The poor old lady ? The Signorina was all 
at sea. There was no one answering to such a 
description among us to-day. 

"The poor old lady," repeated the other 

firmly. "Yes, Lady . I was talking to 

her, and oh ! anybody could see how terrified 
she was. Nervous, you know; trembling at 
the mention of the war, upset, shrinking away. 
And no wonder, I'm sure," she concluded 
genially. " Hasn't she got a son out there ?" 

She betook herself down the steps towards 
her cottage. Our daughter watched the purple- 
spotted blouse meandering downwards from 
terrace to terrace till it disappeared. She was 
too astounded even to be able to remonstrate. 

And, indeed, of what use would it have been ? 

That Lady , distinguished, humorous, with 

her figure erect and slender as a girl's, and her 
refined, delightful face stamped with genius on 
the brow, and with the most delicate humour 
about the mouth ; that this incomparable 
woman, actually in the zenith of her power, 
personal as well as artistic, a being whom it 
seems that age can never touch, to whom the 
years have so far only brought a maturing of 
212 



OUR BLUE-COAT BOYS 

all kinds of excellence, should have appeared 
to anyone as the poor old lady ! And that she 
should be further classed among the frightened ! 
She who more than any fighter of them all 
sees the romance of war, the high lesson of 
war ; who only the day before, speaking of a 
discontented soldier friend, had said to us in 
tones of wonder : 

"He's not enjoying war! It seems so strange." 

There was nothing for it but to laugh. But 
what an insight into the manner in which 
" other people see us." 

In the Signora's early teens her family in- 
dulged in a Dublin season, during which a 
very worthy prelate, the Cardinal Archbishop 
of her Church, died. He was full of years and 
good works, but at no moment of his existence 
remarkable for good looks. 

A sprightly housemaid of the establishment 
demanded permission to go and visit the church 
where he was laid out in state. On her return 
the Padrona's mother inquired how the sight 
had impressed her, expecting a duly pious 
response. 

Quoth the damsel, with her brisk Dublin 
accent : 

213 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

" Well, really, 'm, I thought the Cawdinal 
looked remawkably well !" 

As a rule, however, the Irish lower classes 
are more quick to seize shades of feeling, re- 
finements of emotion, than the poor of other 
races ; especially — to hark back to a former 
page — that peasantry of the older type in which 
a vivid spirituality was kept alive by their 
faith. A chaplain has written to us from the 
Isle of Wight speaking of the immense consola- 
tion he had had in the presence of some Irish 
soldiers among the troops stationed there. 
lt Their faith made me ashamed." 

But indeed the feeling of religion among all 
our men, of whatever creed, and from whatever 
part of the British Isles they have come, is not 
one of the least remarkable manifestations of 
the war. 

"I knew I would not be killed," said a 
wounded soldier beside whose bed we sat the 
other day. " But I knew I'd come back a better 
man, and I think I have." 

Then he added that the only thing that 
troubled them, lying in hospital, was the 
thought of the comrades in the thick of it, and 
not being able to help them. 
214 



OUR BLUE-COAT BOYS 

" Of course," he went on thoughtfully, " we 
can pray. We all do that, of course; we do 
pray, and we know that helps." 

This man was neither Irish nor Catholic. 

Infinitely touching are the remarks they 
make, these dear fellows ; beautiful sometimes 
in their unconscious heroism. 

" Well, at least," said the Signorina to a man 
permanently crippled by shrapnel, saddened 
by the decision that he could never go back to 
the front. " At least you know you've done 
your little bit." 

"Ah, but you see, miss," he answered in all 
simplicity, " among us the saying goes, no one 
has really done his little bit till he's under- 
ground." 

"Will you mind going back?" said a rather 
foolish friend of ours to an exhausted, badly 
wounded sufferer in a Dublin hospital. He 
had seen Mons and its horrors, all the brutality 
of war with little of its concomitant glory. 
The eyes in his drawn face looked up at her 
steadily. 

" If it's my dooty, lady, I'm ready to go." 

" I'd give my other leg to go back," said a 

maimed lad to Lady . He was in a hospital 

215 



m A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

at Lyndhurst, a fair, splendid boy, not yet 
eighteen. 

" Don't make me too soft, Sister," pleaded 
an Irish Fusilier with five bullet wounds in his 
back, to his kindly nurse in the little convent 
hospital near here. " I've got to finish my job 
out there." 

At a recent lecture delivered on " Five Months 
with the British Expeditionary Force" — his 
own experience — Professor Morgan made use 
of these remarkable words : " Our men count 
no cost too high in the service of the nation. 
They greet death like a friend, and go into 
battle as to a festival." 

What wonder, then, that there should be 
such an unshakable spirit of confidence 
throughout the whole of our army, for with 
conscience at peace, and eyes fixed on their 
high ideal, they go forth to fight, knowing that, 
as a great preacher has said, those who do 
battle in a just cause already carry the flame of 
victory on their foreheads. 



216 



IX 

IT'S A FAR CRY TO PERSIA 

11 Come, my tan-faced children, 
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready S 
Have you your pistols ? — Have you your sharp-edged axes ? 

***** 
For we cannot tarry here — we must march, my darlings ; 
we must bear the brunt of danger ! 

***** 
O resistless, restless race ! O beloved race in all ! O, my 

breast 
Aches with tender love for all ! 

O, I mourn and yet exult. I am rapt with love for all ! 

Walt Whitman. 

The master of the Villino got the telegram 
when he was shaving, that morning of Octo- 
ber 26. 

"Slightly wounded. Going London. — H." 

He came straight in to the Signora, who 
instantly read all kinds of sinister meanings 
into the reticent lines. 

Slightly wounded ! H. would be sure to say 
that whatever had happened. Even if he had 
lost an arm or a leg he might very well try 
and break it to us in some such phrase. There 
were certainly grounds for consolation in the 
217 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

fact that he should be " going London," but 
were not the papers full of accounts of the 
felicitous manner in which the transport of 
very serious cases was being daily accom- 
plished ? 

The only brother and very precious ! Always 
in the Signora's mind — stalwart, middle-aged 
man as he is — doubled by and impossible to 
dissociate from a little fair-haired boy, the 
youngest ol the family, endeared by a thousand 
quaint, childish ways. That he should be 
wounded, suffering Heaven knew what un- 
known horror of discomfort and pain, was 
absurdly, but unconquerably to her heart, the 
hurting of the child. Alas ! if an elder sister 
feels this, what must the agony of the mothers 
be all through the world to-day ! 

We telephoned to the clearing station at 
Southampton, and found that the ambulance 
train had already started. Then the master of 
the Villino, and the sister whose home is with 
us, determined to leave for London themselves 
and endeavour to trace our soldier. 

It was late in the afternoon when a comforting 
telegram came through to those left behind ; it 
told us that H. had been run to earth ; that the 

218 



IT'S A FAR CRY TO PERSIA 

wound was indeed favourable ; that he was well 
in health, and that we might expect him here 
to be nursed in a couple of days. 

Very glad the Villino was to have him, very 
proud of its own soldier, deeply thankful to be 
granted the care of him ! 

The Signorina immediately instituted herself 
Red Cross nurse, the local lectures having 
borne fruit after all. The wound was for us 
and for him a very lucky one, but the doctor 
called it dreadful, and, indeed, one could have 
put one's hand into it ; and Juvenal, summoned 
to assist at the first dressing, fainted at the 
sight. But it had not touched any vital point, 
and though the muscle under the shoulder- 
blade was torn in two, it has left no weakness 
in the arm. 

Like all soldiers we have met, he will not 
hear of the suggestion that it was inflicted by 
a dum-dum bullet. Nevertheless, it is a sin- 
gular fact that where the bullet went in the 
hole is the ordinary size of the missile, and 
where it came out it is the size of a man's fist. 
Something abnormal about that German pro- 
jectile there must have been. But we were 
ready to go down on our knees and thank God 

219 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

fasting for a good man's life ; and it was clear 
that it would take a long time to heal ! 

Anyone who knows our soldiers knows the 
perfectly simple attitude of their minds as far 
as their own share in the great struggle is con- 
cerned. Further, they have an everyday, 
common-sense, unexaggerated manner of speak- 
ing of their terrible experiences which helps us 
stay-at-homes very much — we who are apt to 
regard the front as a nightmare, hell and 
shambles mixed. 

11 We were a bit cut up that day, but we got 
our own back with the bayonet." 

" Well, they took our range rather too neatly, 
but man for man Tommy's a match for the Hun 
any day, even if we were short of shells." 

" Poor lads ! they had to trot off before they'd 
had their breakfast — a six-mile walk and stiff 
work to follow — after three days and three 
nights of it below Hollebeke. We'd been sent 
back for a rest when the message came ; but 
the men didn't mind anything, only the loss of 
the breakfast. 'Such a good breakfast as it 
was, sir,' as one of them said to me. Six o'clock 
in the morning and a six-mile march ! A few 
of the fellows clapped their bacon into their 
220 



IT'S A FAR CRY TO PERSIA 

pockets. The line was broken and the Germans 
coming in. Someone had to drive them out, 
and the Worcesters came handy." 

" Oh yes, we did it all right ; running like 
smoke they were, squealing — they can't stand 
the bayonet !" 

That was the ''little bit" where our soldier 
got his wound. 

4< It's nothing at all, me child." 

His sergeant dressed it first at the back of 
the firing-line, then he walked into Ypres. He 
went to the hospital, found it crowded — ' Lots 
of fellows worse than I was ' — so he strolled 
away and had his hair cut ! — " A real good 
shampoo and a shave, and a bath, and then a 
jolly good dinner !" And then he proceeded to 
look up some nice fellows of the Irish Horse. 
And in the end he went back to the hospital, 
and they " did him up !" 

When one thinks that in peace time, if anyone 
had accidentally received such a wound, what 
a fuss there would have been ! What a sending 
for doctors and nurses ! what long faces ! what 
lamentations, precautions, and misgivings ! It 
makes one understand better the state of things 
over [there. How splendidly indifferent our 
221 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

manhood has become to suffering ! How 
gloriously cheap it holds life itself! 

H. is happily not among those unfortunate 
brave men who suffer nervous distress from 
the sights, the scenes, and the strain of war- 
fare, but he has a keen, almost a poetic, sensi- 
bility to the romance and tragedy of his 
experiences. 

As he sat, those November days, in one of 
the deep arm-chairs before the great bricked 
hearth in the Villino library, a short phrase 
here and there would give us a picture of some 
episode which stamped itself upon the memory 
of the listener. 

11 Lord, it was jolty, driving along in the am- 
bulance to the station ! The poor boy next to 
me — badly wounded, poor chap ! lost a lot ot 
blood — he got faint and lay across my breast ; 
went to sleep there in the end." 

" Shells? Ton me word, it was beautiful 
to see them at night ! Oh, one's all right, you 
know, if one keeps in one's trenches. One of 
my subalterns — ah, poor lad ! I don't know what 
took him — he got right out of the trench and 
stood on the edge, stretching himself. A shell 
came along and bowled him over. We dug 
222 



IT'S A FAR CRY TO PERSIA 

him out. He was an awfully good-looking 
boy. There wasn't a scratch on him, but he 
was stone dead ; his back broken. And there 
he lay as beautiful as an angel. The Colonel 
and I, we buried him. He was twenty-three ; 
just married. The Colonel and I used to bury 
our men at night." 

Suddenly the speaker's shoulders shook with 
laughter. 

"Those shells! One of my fellows had one 
burst within a yard of him. Lord, I thought 
he was in pieces ! He was covered in earth 
and rubbish ! ' Has that done for you ?' I 
called out to him. ' I think it has, sir,' he said, 
and you should have seen him clutching himself 
all over ! And then there was a grin. ' No, 
sir, it's only a bruise!' Oh, you get not to 
mind them, except one kind ; that does make 
a nasty noise — a real nasty noise ; it was just 
that noise one minded. Ugh, when you heard 
it coming along! Spiteful, it was !" 

In the private London hospital where he 
spent three days the bed next to him was 
occupied by a Major of Artillery, wounded in 
the head. 

11 There was not much wrong with him, poor 
223 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

old chap ! but he had got a bit of nerve-strain. 
Lord, he never let me get a wink, calling out 

all night in his sleep : ' D that mist ! I can't 

see the swine. A bit more to the left. Now, 
now, boys, now we've got them ! Oh, damn 
that mist! Ha! we got them that time — got 
the swine !" 

The doctors who saw our soldier were rather 
surprised to find him so calm in his mind. 
They could scarcely believe he should sleep 
so sound at nights — that the human machine 
should be so little out of gear. Yet there were 
days when he called himself "slack," looked ill 
enough, and one could see that even a short 
walk was a severe trial of strength. 

We shall not lightly forget a funny little 
incident which happened upon an afternoon 
when he seemed peculiarly exhausted. He 
was sitting in his arm-chair close to the fire, 
looking grey and drawn, declaring that the 
north-east wind never agreed with him. A 
kindly clerical neighbour rushed in upon us. 
He had just heard that fifty thousand Germans 
had landed at Sheringham. All the troops 
were under orders. Despatch riders had 
galloped from Aldershot to stop the billeting 
224 



IT'S A FAR CRY TO PERSIA 

of a regiment just arrived here. The men had 
started up in the middle of their dinners and 
begun to pack again. They were to go back 
to Aldershot and concentrate for the great 
move. Further — indisputable authority ! — the 
Chief Constable of the county had private in- 
formation of the invasion. 

You should have seen our soldier ! He was 
up out of his chair with a spring, his blue eyes 
blazing. All thelangour, the unacknowledged 
stiffness and ache of his wound, were gone. 
If ever there was a creature possessed with the 
pure joy of battle it was he. How much the 
womenkind miss who have never seen their 
men leading a charge ! What a vital part of a 
man's character lies dormant in times of peace ! 

There is, we believe, a large number of 
people who regard this fighting spirit as a 
purely animal quality; recently, indeed, a 
certain professor delivered a lecture on the 
subject of wild dogs and wolves who fight in 
packs, with special reference to the present 
state of humanity. These thinkers, sitting at 
ease in their armchairs, placid materialists, who 
have never known their own souls, much less 
do they know those of their countrymen. 
225 Q 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

What we saw in our soldier's eyes was, we 
swear, the leap of the spirit — the fine steel of 
the soul springing out of the scabbard of the 
body, the fire from the clay. Carlyle has some- 
where a lovely phrase anent that spark of 
heroism that will burn in the heart of the lowest 
British soldier, the poorest, dullest peasant 
lad, and make of him hero and martyr, enable 
him to face long agony and death, endure as 
well as charge. 

So H. flung off his languor and dashed out 
of his armchair and sprang to the telephone to 
order himself a car, and presently departed, 
already invisibly armed, in search of — this time 
— an invisible foe. For the foe was invisible ! 

No one knew whence the scare had come ; 
whether there were any real justification for 
the preparations which were certainly ordered. 
The regiment which had had to pack up again 
just as it had got into its billets, and go back 
to Aldershot in the very middle of its dinner, 
was kept under arms all night ; but there was 
never the point of a single Pickelhaube visible on 
the horizon at Sheringham or elsewhere. And 
on examination it turned out that the " Chief 
Constable " of the county, that unimpeachable 
226 



IT'S A FAR CRY TO PERSIA 

and alarming authority, had been none other 
than the local policeman, which was a come- 
down indeed ! But the thrill was not altogether 
unpleasant, and we like to remember the sick 
soldier springing up, that St. Michael fire in 
his blue eyes. 

In a short account written for his school 
magazine, H. summarizes the experiences of 
his own regiment at Ypres thus : 

" All the officers in my company are wounded 
or invalided. The men are very cheerful under 
all the hardships and losses, and their behaviour 
under fire is splendid. The Brigade (5th) has 
been taken three times at least to 'mend the 
line ' where the Germans had broken through. 
From October 24 to November 5 my regiment 
lost about 450 officers and men — mostly, thank 
God, wounded. The Germans can't shoot for 
nuts, but their artillery fire is accurate and 
incessant, and the machine-guns very deadly." 

There is nothing more touching than the 
devotion of the officers to their men. They 
feel towards them truly as if they were their 
children. 

227 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

11 No officer," said the widow of a great 
general to us the other day, "ever thinks of 
himself in action, ever casts a thought to the 
bullets flying about him. Indeed, the officers 
don't seem to believe they can get hit ; they're 
so occupied in looking after their men. All the 
time they're looking at their men." 

Even as we write these lines we see the 
death, in the Dardanelles, of a young officer 
who had been under H. when he was training 
reserves during his recent period of conva- 
lescent home service. This youth was, in our 
brother's eyes, the perfection of young man- 
hood. He prophesied for him great things. 
He told us many stories of his quaint humour 
and incisive wit. One anecdote remains. 
Among their recruits were between twenty 
and thirty extremely bad characters — slack, 
undisciplined fellows, worthless material be- 
longing almost to the criminal classes. After 
working in vain with all his energy to en- 
deavour to put some kind of soldierly discipline 
into them, young W. paraded them in the bar- 
rack yard, and addressed them in the following 
language : 

"His Majesty's Government cannot afford 
228 



IT'S A FAR CRY TO PERSIA 

nowadays to spend money uselessly. You 
are a dead waste to the nation. You are not 
worth the food you get nor the clothes you 
wear. It has been decided, therefore, to send 
you to the front ; and, as every man is bound to 
do his utmost to help his country in the present 
crisis, it is earnestly to be hoped that you will, 
each one of you, endeavour to get himself shot 
as soon as possible." 

We understand that the result of this strin- 
gent discourse on that "bad hat" squad was 
miraculous, although the sergeant-major was 
so overcome with mirth that he had to retire to 
give vent to it. 

This boy had been serving in the East in a 
wild and difficult district, and had distinguished 
himself so remarkably that he was summoned 
to the Foreign Office to advise upon an ex- 
pedition which it was proposed to send to 
those regions. Never was there any life so 
full of promise. Gay and gallant youth, it 
seems a cruel decree that the bullet of some 
vile Turk should have had the power to rob 
England of a son so likely to do her signal 
honour and service in the future. " It is the 
best that are taken " — a phrase sadly familiar 
229 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

just now that finds only too true an echo in 
everyone's experience. 

There was another, whom we had known 
from the time when he was an apple-cheeked 
little boy in petticoats — a sunny, level-headed 
child, who gave the minimum of trouble and 
the maximum of satisfaction to his parents from 
the moment of his appearance on this earth. 
All his short life always busy, always happy. 
His mother said that she had never seen a 
frown of discontent on his face. Head boy at 
Harrow, where the authorities begged to be 
allowed to keep him on another year for the 
sake of the good example he gave ; writer of 
the prize essay three years running ; winner 
of all the cups for athletics ; champion boxer 
and fencer — with these brilliant qualities he 
had — rare combination indeed ! — a steady, well- 
balanced mind. With high ideals he had a 
sober judgment. He was but twenty. With 
all these achievements — splendid lad ! — he fell 
leading his platoon of Highlanders at Aubers 
upon that most ill-fated, most tragic 9th of May. 

11 1 always wanted my son to be just like 
Keith " — more than one friend gave this tribute 
to the stricken father. 

230 



IT'S A FAR CRY TO PERSIA 

Characteristic of the unchanged romantic 
mysticism that lies deep in the hearts of the 
Scots — Scots of the glens and hills — are the 
words in which the local paper refers to the loss 
which had befallen the country in the death of 
the gallant young officer : " He died like a 
Stewart : he dreed his weird, he drank the cup 
of his race !" 

It is the fine flower of our young manhood 
that is being mown down. What is to become 
of England, robbed of her best ? It seems such 
waste and loss; we who cannot fight feel at 
times as if the pressure of such calamity " doth 
make our very tears like unto bloode." But we 
must believe that it is not waste, but seed ; that 
the nations who sow in tears will reap in joy ; 
that each of these young lives, so gladly given, 
shares in the redemption of the country ; that, in 
all reverence, in all faith, that they are mystic- 
ally united to Calvary; and that their glory 
will be presently shown forth even as in the 
glory of resurrection ! 

A correspondent writing from the front 

describes the expression in the eyes of the 

friendly officer, who has been his guide, as he 

pointed out the myriad crosses of the burial- 

231 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

ground. "He looked envious," he says, and 
adds that he noticed that all out there "speak 
with envy of the dead." 

Is not the nation's honour sharpened to its 
finest point when the ideal of its manhood is to 
die for the country ? Dulce et decorum . . . 

We were very glad, nevertheless, when, in 
spite of his repeated applications to return to 
his own men, H. was ordered to take a command 
in the Persian Gulf. The link that binds a man 
to comrades with whom he has shared every 
possible danger and hardship, to those who 
have faced death with him, whom he has him- 
self led on to peril and agony, the while they 
have been to him as his children — such a link 
is indeed one that is hard to break ! Their 
peril has been his ; their glory is his pride. 

11 If I can single out one regiment for special 
praise," said the Commander-in-Chief," it is the 
Worcesters." 

And again : 

" I consider the Worcesters saved Europe on 
that day." 

It is no wonder that H. should be proud of 
them ; that the thousand fibres should draw 
him back to them. 

232 



IT'S A FAR CRY TO PERSIA 

But, when the summons came, he was told 
" to prepare for a hot climate." And then, of all 
strange things, or so it seemed to us, we found 
that his destination was Persia. The Garden 
of Eden ! Further, it was rumoured, the 
objective was likely to be Bagdad. It sounded 
like a fairy tale. He promised us Attar of 
Roses ; and indeed, we think, carpets. And a 
flippant niece wrote to him that she was sure 
that by a little perseverance he could find a 
magic one, and come sailing across the sky 
some night after duty, like the merchant in the 
Arabian nights. She added : " And do bring 
me a hanging garden, if you can." But when 
the parting came it was a very cruel reality. 
It's a far cry to Persia ! 

He started on the day of the sinking of the 
Lusitania ; a date branded on the history of 
the world till the end of all time. The two 
who had gone to fetch him and brought him 
home — so contented in their tender anxiety 
that he was safely wounded — saw him on 
board the great liner. 

Many Indians returning to Bombay, a few 
officers ordered to his own destination, a batch 
of nurses for Malta, and one or two ladies 

233 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

hurrying to their sons wounded in the Dar- 
danelles — these were all his fellow-passengers. 

It somewhat restored our confidence, shaken 
by the facile success of the monstrous crime, 
to know that they were to be convoyed a 
certain way, and that they had a gun on 
board. Nevertheless, they were not to escape 
menace. 

"The evening we started," he wrote, "I 
asked the steward if they had seen any sub- 
marines about. ' No, sir,' he admitted reluc- 
tantly. Then brightened up, anxious to oblige, 
' But we have seen a lot of luggage floating 
about — trunks and clothes, sir.' " 

(It was obvious no passenger need give up 
hope ; and, indeed, the letter posted at Gibraltar 
continues) : — 

" I have had no occasion to use your life- 
saving waistcoat yet, though, as a matter of 
fact, we had a small-sized adventure with a 
submarine. At dinner on Monday we felt that 
they had suddenly altered the ship's course. 
It aopears that a submarine was spotted about 
five hundred yards away. The captain slewed 
the vessel round to bring our one gun to bear 
on her. However, the smoke obscured our 
234 



IT'S A FAR CRY TO PERSIA 

view, and the submarine must have seen our 
gun, as she disappeared." 

Then comes an anecdote, dreadfully charac- 
teristic of our happy-go-lucky English ways, a 
comedy that might have been — for this house, 
at least, God knows! — the direst tragedy. 

"Next day," he continues, "we had gun 
practice, but it turned out that none of the 
gun's crew knew how to work her ; and after 
fumbling for about two hours, a passenger 
came along and showed them how to manage 
her, and fired her off. We all cheered." 

The next stage on that lengthening journey 
that is to take him so unrealizably far away 
from us is Malta. The place laid its spell upon 
him, though at first he writes : 

11 From the ship both islands looked most 
unprepossessing : dry, arid, khaki-coloured 
lumps, full of khaki-coloured buildings. Once 
on shore one begins to love the place. The 
buildings, fortifications, and general spirit are 
most inspiring and grandiose. One expects to 
see some proud old Templar riding down the 
gay streets, looking neither to the right nor 
left. I had no time to do any of the right 
Cathedrals, where there are wonderful paint- 
235 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

ings by Michael Angelo, etc., nor the Grand 
Master's Palace Armoury, with the knight's 
armour, nor the Inquisitor's Palace. I went 
off to look for wounded Worcesters from the 
Dardanelles. I had no time to see anything 
else as the hospital was a long way off. 

" Every hole and corner is turned into a 
beautiful garden, with lovely flowers and 
'penetrating scents,' fountains, and shady 
palms and trees. 

II How you would revel in the churches ! 
They are more numerous than in Rome, and 
quite beautiful. The people, too, are intensely 
religious. 

" There are many French shops here, and 
the French women look tawdry beside the 
Maltese, with their wonderful black cloaks and 
reserved aristocratic air. 

II I am sending you a weird map full of quaint 
spelling, given to me by a wounded Worcester- 
shire (4th Batt.) sergeant, at the hospital at 
Malta, and a rough idea of the difficulties of 
the landing. Early on one Monday morning, 
about 1 a.m., the ships got into position round 
the promontory, with the troop lighters behind. 
About 4 a.m. the latter were towed off during 

236 



IT'S A FAR CRY TO PERSIA 

a bombardment such as never has been heard 
or seen before in the history of the world. 

" The Turks did not reply till the boats got 
quite close to shore and the ships' guns could 
not fire on the located maxims (which were 
sunk in deep, narrow slips close to the shore). 
As far as I gathered, the Lancashire Fusiliers 
were the first actually to get on shore on the 
extreme left at Tekki Barna, where they 
charged with the bayonet and the Turks 
retired. They were able to enfilade a good 
portion of the ground, and enabled the Essex 
and 4th Worcesters, both of whom had suffered 
ver}' heavily from Maxim fire, to land and drive 
the Turks back. Three boatloads of Dublin 
Fusiliers were wiped out by gun and Maxim 
fire near Ish Messarer point. The Lancashire 
Fusiliers suffered rather badly from the fire of 
some of our ships' guns, which, of course, could 
not be helped. 

"The Worcesters were sent up to help the 
Essex, and advanced against some barbed wire, 
which a young subaltern called Wyse volun- 
teered to cut. He rolled over sideways till he 
got under the wire and cut it from strand to 
strand upwards. As he got to the last strand 

237 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

a sniper shot off two fingers in successive 
shots. 

11 The snipers had their faces painted green 
to harmonize with the surroundings, and were 
calmly surrendering as we advanced, having 
picked off numbers of men. They were all 
shot, however, pour encourager les autres. 

" My sergeant was shot in the hip that evening, 
but he told me that by Wednesday the troops 
had secured Envedos, a most important position, 
and the safe landing of stores and guns was 
thus secured. 

" He said the Turks either ran from the 
bayonet or surrendered. The prisoners said 
they did not want to fight, but were forced to 
do so by the Germans. 

" The ships are in their more or less correct 
position in the map, the sergeant says, as he 
took trouble to find out from a naval chart." 

From Malta to Alexandria, from Alexandria 
to Aden, and from thence to Bombay. His 
letters mark each point of his Odyssey. And 
at Alexandria he is fascinated with the move- 
ment and colour; he goes on shore and visits 
the shops; he parts from the delightful American 
lady who has been the life and soul of the ship ; 
238 



IT'S A FAR CRY TO PERSIA 

she whose wounded son awaits her in Cairo. 
At Aden, the heat striking at them from the 
shore prevents him from landing ; an unat- 
tractive torrid spot. Here they take in a young 
Indian Government official, who gives an inter- 
esting detail upon his destination : 

"He knew Wilcox very well, the man who 
was going to make the barrage on the Euphrates 
and Tigris, and convert Mesopotamia into the 
richest country in the world. Wilcox said he 
found all the details given in the Bible about 
the various depths and breadths of the rivers 
absolutely accurate — curious after all these 
centuries !" 

At Bombay he has a pleasant time; a brother 
officer having wired to relations who take him 
about and show him what is most worth 
seeing in his short stay. He puts up at the 
Bombay Yacht Club, " wonderful place, like 
fairyland, with palms and fountains and music, 
with cool, quiet rooms looking out over wide 
and lovely views." He goes on long drives 
"under trees that grow for miles and miles 
along the sea coast, where the graceful-moving 
natives in their bright colours look awfully 
picturesque." 

239 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

He sees the famous towers of silence where, 
with effective, but no doubt quite unconscious, 
alliteration, he describes "the ghoulish vultures 
sitting grimly in the glorious gold mohur 
trees." 

His last letter says : " I start on Sunday for 
Bosra." 

He believes that they will remain at Bosra, 
and makes little of the fact that the heat is 
terrible there just now 

" We will live in cool underground rooms," 
he says, " and be all right !" 

And now we know that we shall not have 
news of him again for a long time. A thousand 
anxieties assail us, for which we can have no 
reassurance. We picture him in that strange 
region, but realize that of its strangeness we 
can form no real image. 

He will see the dead cities and the great 
desert wastes and the swamps — it is in those 
swamps under the merciless sun that our terror 
lies ; he will deal with a fierce and treacherous 
people whose thoughts are not as our thoughts, 
whose motives and beliefs are irreconcilably 
alien ; and this dangerous race is fermenting 
under the influences, the money, the lies, the 
240 



IT'S A FAR CRY TO PERSIA 

ceaseless open and secret poison leaven of 
a race more treacherous, more dangerous 
still. 

Blinding sunshine, black shadows, arid 
stretches of dried earth and mud and burnt 
vegetation ; the colour of the Eastern crowd, 
the river waters and the harbour stretch ; the 
Arab and the Kurd, the Turk, the Armenian, 
and the Jew, sights and scenes and creatures 
that have been but as names to us, are about 
him. He has followed the drum from Cape 
Town to Magaliesburg, from Bloemfontein to 
Bethlehem, from Gibraltar to Cork, from Soupir 
to Ypres, from Ypres to Plymouth, and from 
Plymouth to the Euphrates; he has left his 
cool, green Ireland, his hunting and his fishing, 
his own wide acres and the rural life among 
his beasts for this picturesque, unknown, un- 
certain destiny ! 

Often in the long hot hours will not his mind 
go back to those stretches of shady, luxuriant 
park land where his cattle feed ; to the great 
lime avenue with the voice of the bees; the 
circle of the purple hills, the woods, those 
incomparable woods of our old home with 
their cool depths of bracken, silver green ; the 

241 R 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

dells, the climbing roads, the view over the 
" deer-park " to the sunset, which impressed 
even our childish imaginations; the voice of 
the wild pigeons through the trees ; and the 
immense white house — empty — which before 
this war broke out, he was about to furnish ; 
the corridors, the vast rooms full of memories ; 
latterly, to us, of hopes. His heart will be 
there, we know. 

And his home is guarded by his faithful 
Spanish servant, who followed him, out of 
love, from those far Gibraltar days of his 
young soldier's life ; who, when a legacy made 
of him a comparatively rich man, refused to 
profit of it, and sent the money back to a distant 
relative in Spain, saying: " What do I want of 
it ? You, my master, you, my father, you, my 
mother, you, my country, you, all I want !" 
Pedro, by a singular freak of fate, ruling this 
Irish land with an equal zeal and ability, writes 
to us : " I pray my dere master may come home 
safe. I have great hope in Our Lady, the 
Mother of God." 

What is left to us, too, but a similar trust ? 
We can but commend him to the Father of 
All that He may overshadow him with His 
242 



IT'S A FAR CRY TO PERSIA 

shoulders ; that the sun should not burn him 
by day, nor the moon by night ; that he may 
be guarded from the arrow that flieth by day, 
from the assault of the evil one in the noon- 
tide ! 



243 



X 



" Happy in England ! I could be content 
To see no other verdure than its own : 
To feel no other breezes than are blown 
Through the tall woods with high romances blent ; 
Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment 
For skies Italian . . ." 

Keats. 

June 29, 191 5. — The feast of Peter and Paul 
comes round with a new significance. In war 
time we learn the meaning of so much that has 
seemed unimportant ; of things hidden away at 
the back of our consciousness — things neg- 
lected, unknown, or even despised — and we 
learn, too, the worthlessness of so much that 
has seemed paramount and necessary, desirable 
and precious. War is a stern master. He 
teaches above all the relative values ; how to 
weigh the greater against the less ; how to 
fling away with one superb gesture the whole 
sum of human possessions for a single im- 
perishable prize. 

" What doth it profit a man if he gain the 
whole world and suffer the loss of his own 
soul?" 

244 



A THREE DAYS' CHRONICLE 

He who spoke these words gently to a 
handful of poor Jews now seems to cry them 
with a voice of thunder from end to end of the 
earth. 

Thus, this, their festival day, brings the two 
great champions of the Cross — and it is for 
Christ and the Cross that every son of England 
is fighting to-day — before our minds with a 
singular vividness and nearness : Peter, type 
of the natural man, untutored ; sure of himself 
and of his own good impulses, of the honest 
purpose of his guileless heart ; impetuous, 
loving, weak, with all purely human weakness, 
even to betrayal ; and — divinely strengthened — 
Peter the rock, Peter the fisherman who con- 
quered the world ! Paul, the Patrician, the 
apostle born out of due time, whose ardour 
is all of the intellect, keen as a blade and burn- 
ing as a flame; the little man of Tarsus upon 
whose spirit the teaching of all Christianity 
reposes as firmly to-day as does the Church 
upon the stone of Peter ; Paul, whom the 
Captain, Christ Himself, enlisted by the 
miraculous condescension of a personal appeal. 
Has not every Christian, whatever his creed, 
vowed them reverence throughout all the ages ? 

245 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

To-day, may not the eyes of the believer look 
up to them with a new confidence? 

The Signora, lying through a wakeful night 
and thinking of these things, went with a rush 
of memory back to Rome, to scenes and ex- 
periences and thoughts dominated by the 
memories of the two chief apostles. 

There is nothing more characteristic of their 
lives than the different manners of their death. 
Peter is Peter to the end ; first yielding to the 
natural impulse, then, by virtue of the grace 
of God, returning upon himself and leaping to 
the highest altitude of superhuman sacrifice. 
In the whole tradition of the Church there is 
no legend more touching than that which tells 
us how Peter, flying out of Rome, met the 
Christ carrying the Cross. It is the original 
Peter in all his guilelessness who, unstartled 
by the vision, with the perfect simplicity of his 
faith, asks: " Domine quo vadis?" And it is 
the sublime founder of the Church of God who, 
unquestioning, accepts the Master's rebuke, 
and retraces his steps to face his Lord's torment 
with the added agony his own holy humility 
demands. 

Every pilgrim to Rome has knelt or stood, 
246 



A THREE DAYS' CHRONICLE 

prayed or pondered at the tomb of Peter in 

the golden twilight of the great Basilica, by 

the vastness of which, as Marion Crawford 

says, " mind and judgment are dazed and 

staggered." Who has not leant on the marble 

balustrade of the confession and looked down 

upon the ninety-five gilded lamps that burn 

there day and night, upon the kneeling white 

figure of the Seventh Pius? — a vision in which 

the whole linked grandeur and piety of the 

Church of Rome seems epitomized. In St. 

Peter's, Simon, the poor fisherman, is little 

thought of; it is Peter, saint and pontiff, who 

is paramount ; he who has miraculously fed 

the lambs and fed the sheep from that hour on 

the sea of Galilee to this day. And very few 

remember the old man, too weak and aged to 

bear his cross, who had climbed half-way to 

the Janiculum, when his executioners, seeing 

that he could not advance any further, planted 

his gibbet in the deep yellow sand and crucified 

him then and there — head downwards, as he 

begged them. This is the ancient tradition, 

and it further tells us that he was followed 

by but few of the faithful, who stood apart, 

weeping. 

247 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

Impressive as are these hallowed spots, 
these glorious memorials of the Eternal City ; 
however full, to the believer, of the atmosphere 
of the days of faith — oases in the great desert 
of life, where the palms of the martyrs are still 
green and throw a grateful shade — there is 
nothing, to our minds, in all the grandeur of 
Rome, even under the dome of Peter, com- 
parable to the effect produced upon the mind 
by a visit to Tre Fontane. 

As Peter was led to die the death of the 
lowest criminal — the death of his Master — Paul 
was brought forth to the death of the sword, 
reserved for the Patrician. 

To go to Tre Fontane and visit the spot of 
his martyrdom is to return to the primitive 
ages of the Church. The fisherman lies in 
a tomb such as no king or emperor, no hero 
or conqueror or best beloved of the world's 
potentates ever had. And Paul sleeps in that 
great pillared church fnori le mura, in a severity 
and dignity of magnificence very well befitting 
the stern fire of the apostle's zeal. But the 
memory of his martyrdom is consecrated in 
a curious isolation of poverty, one might almost 
say, aloofness ; an earnest purity that reminds 
248 



A THREE DAYS' CHRONICLE 

one, as we have said, of early Christian times. 
You have all the splendours ; the golden glory, 
the marble, the mosaic, the sculpture and the 
jewels; the movement, the colour and the crowd 
of Rome behind, and you come out into the 
sweeping solitudes of the Campagna. For 
those who know and love those strange, arid, 
melancholy spaces, there is no more potent 
spell than the hold they lay upon the spirit. 
The gem-like distances of the mountains, the 
radiant arch of the Italian sky, the movement 
of light and shadow over the immense waste, 
the romance of each of the historic ways, the 
mystery of the secrets they hold — better pens 
than ours have striven to embody the charm 
and failed ! Why should we try ? It is like 
a strain of music the meaning of which is lost 
to us. We hear; we cannot understand. It is 
too full of messages. It is sad and beautiful 
and haunting, and withal intensely human. 
Here you have nature at her wildest and most 
untrammelled ; and yet, never was city so 
peopled, so thick with memories of all races 
and all histories; endless streams of pilgrims 
have traversed the long roads ; the centuries 
have come and gone upon them ; the blood, 

249 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

the tears, the strivings and hopes of all humanity 
are here. 

One looks forward towards wave upon wave 
of low-lying ground, bordered by the mountain 
barriers ; and each time one looks back, the 
dome of Peter hangs pearl-like against the 
sky. 

Speaking of the memory of our drive to Tre 
Fontane, the Signorina is reminded that she 
has jotted down her impressions in an old 
diary. 

" We drove to the Trappist Monastery," she 
wrote, " where St. Paul was beheaded. His 
head is said to have rebounded three times as 
it struck the earth, and on each of those three 
hallowed spots there sprang up a miraculous 
jet of water. The first spring is still warm as 
if with the glow of the great spirit that there 
left its mortal frame ; the second spring is 
tepid; the third cold as death. 

"The drive is a beautiful one; through the 
Campagna stretching wide and green on either 
side, bounded by the mountains, some now 
snow-capped. The first sight of the monastery 
breaks on one from the top of a little hill. The 
huddled buildings appear suddenly at the foot 

250 



A THREE DAYS' CHRONICLE 

in a deep valley, shrouded by eucalyptus 
groves. On the right of the convent the 
ground rises again, covered with a perfect 
forest of the same trees. It is one of the 
saddest and most impressive places I ever 
saw. It strikes chill, even when the rest of 
the Campagna is warm, and the continual 
shuddering of the eucalyptus leaves makes 
an uncanny murmur. We drove through an 
avenue of them, grey-green all over, trunks 
and leaves ; and then came to an arched gate- 
way closed by an iron gate. 

11 We dismounted from our carriage, already 
quite impressed, and pulled the bell, which 
echoed with a deep and beautiful note through 
the monastery grounds. 

"A porter opened and we walked into the 
garden, still under the eucalyptus (mingled 
here with palms and lemons), and made more 
beautiful still by the fragments of antique 
sculpture that border the walks — marble 
capitols and broken acanthus leaves and 
pieces of old pavements wonderfully worked 
in scrolls and twists. 

11 Papa particularly lost his heart to a lion's 
head, with a dear flat nose ! He could not 

251 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

tear himself away from it ; he wanted it so 
badly for our new little garden in Surrey ! 

"As there are three fountains, so there are 
three churches, but the miraculous springs are 
all under one roof. This is a fine, compara- 
tively modern church, situated at the end of an 
avenue of eucalyptus and marble fragments. 
It has a classic pavement (pagan) representing 
the four seasons. 

"Opposite the entrance are the fountains — 
built in, now, and covered over, but each with 
a little opening where the attendant friar will 
let down a ladle and draw up the water for the 
faithful. Over each fountain is an altar, with 
the head of St. Paul, in bas-relief, sculptured 
by Canova : 

" ' A la premiere, Fame vient a Finstant meme 
de s'echapper du corps. Ce chef glorieux est 
plein de vie ! A la seconde, les ombres de la 
mort couvrent deja ses admirables traits ; a la 
troisieme, le sommeil eternel les a envahis, et 
quoique demeures tout rayonnants de beaute, 
ils disent, sans parler, que dans ce monde ces 
levres ne s'entr'ouvriront plus, et que ce regard 
d'aigle s'est voile pour toujours.' 

" In the right-hand corner of the first altar is 
the pillar which marks the actual spot of the 
martyrdom of the fiery-hearted saint. The 
252 



A THREE DAYS' CHRONICLE 

ancient Via Lorentina passed along this very 
place, and here stood the mile-stone, whereat 
St. Paul was beheaded. 

11 ' This is absolutely certain,' said the monk 
who conducted us. ' Even protestants acknow- 
ledge the death to have taken place here. For 
the rest,' indicating the three fountains, ' there 
is only the legend. You may believe it or not, 
as you like.' 

11 He looked so happy, this monk. He had 
been thirty years at Tre Fontane, but there 
was no sign of age on his face. It was, per- 
haps, a trifle withered, like a ripe apple that 
has lain long on a shelf, but that was all. And 
yet he said that, for the first fifteen years, he 
had suffered continuously from malarial fever. 
He had superintended, and even worked at, the 
planting of the eucalyptus groves which have 
so purified the district that there has not been 
one case of the sickness since. 

" The other two churches are close to one 
another. The first is very old and utterly bare, 
and, in a strange, mournful way, deeply im- 
pressive. It dates from the sixth century, and 
is lofty and vaulted and almost Gothic in its 
spirit. It has several rose-windows, and there 
2 53 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

are many round holes in the walls also. These 
are now either empty or fitted with common 
glass, but they were once filled with thin slices 
of alabaster, or other precious transparencies. 
At present it seems the embodiment in stone 
of the Trappist order, ' la piu severa ordine 
della chiesa Cattolica,' as our monk described 
it. The church is as cold as a well. 

" The last of the three churches is of a much 
gayer mood : quite Romanesque, perched on a 
pretty flight of rounded steps. It has a crypt 
over the bodies of St. Zeno and two thousand 
and more companions, martyred Christians, 
who built the Baths of Diocletian." 

The drive through that eucalyptus wood 
here described remains one of the most curious 
impressions of those Roman days. It was like 
passing through a Dante circle — the first circle 
of all, of Limbo, where Virgil met the poet ; an 
unsubstantial wraith-like world, full of a per- 
petual whisper and murmur : 

" Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare, 
Non avea pianto, ma che di sospiri, 
Che l'aura eterna facevan tremare : 

E cio avvenia di duol senza martiri, 
Ch'avean le turbe, ch'eran molte e grandi, 
E d'infanti, e di femmine e di vivi." 

254 



A THREE DAYS' CHRONICLE 

Whether the sky became really overcast as we 
entered into these mysterious precincts, or 
whether the height of the trees shadowed the 
narrow way, certainly there was a dimness 
about us ; not a positive darkness but a nega- 
tion of light, even as the chill that enfolded us 
was not so much a cold as a cessation of heat. 

But through the gates of the monastery 
courtyard we saw sunshine again, and white 
pigeons strutting about the cobbles, picking 
and preening themselves — a wonderful picture 
of peace. It is a consecrated spot ; a place the 
most aloof, the most severe, the most denuded 
of all earthly joys that we have ever seen ; a 
stage on the arid way of pilgrims forging deter- 
minedly by the shortest cut to heaven. And 
yet it is full of sweetness. As from a mountain 
ledge, the world must lie so far below these 
Trappists that it is no longer seen, scarcely 
divined behind its own vapours. No use looking 
down : looking up — there is the blue sky, and 
there are the peaks pointing heavenward, still 
to be conquered. There is very little comfort 
for the traveller, but he has a strange gladness. 
He is cradled in ethereal silences. The balm 
of majestic solitude bathes his soul ; his spirit 
255 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

is cheered by an air as pure as it is vivifying, 
and he knows that he will climb the peaks. 

July 4. — Mrs. McComfort, our cook, has a 
brother on the Clyde. He writes an extraordi- 
nary account of the effort expected of, and 
given by, the able workman. 

" It may be, miss," says Mrs. McComfort to 
the Signorina, her chief confidant, "he'll be 
called up for a job on a ship that's just come in, 
and that'll mean that he and the rest of them 
will be at it from seven in the morning till eight 
the next morning. Yes, miss, all night, as well 
as all day. And then they'll come home, and 
it's too weary to eat they are, and they'll just 
roll themselves up and fall asleep, as tired as 
dogs ; and when they've slept a bit, maybe 
they can get a little food down. And then it's 
off back again to work ! And that'll go on till 
the job's done. And when the battleships 
come in, the steamers do be waiting all night 
upon the Clyde, to take the men up to them, 
it's that urgent. And, oh, miss, how they do 
love the ships they've built ! And when one is 
lost, you'd never believe the grief there is, with 
the men crying and saying : ■ It's my old lady's 
gone, my poor old lady !' " 

256 



A THREE DAYS' CHRONICLE 

They need no comment, such stories as these. 
Here are humble heroes, martyrs of duty ; here 
is the poor heart of humanity, with its infinite 
power of attachment. We have scarcely heard 
of anything more touching than the tears of 
these rough men for their " poor old lady." 

We saw a letter the other day from a trans- 
port driver describing, to a relative in England, 
the meeting with an old friend on the blood- 
stained, shell-battered road at the back of 
Arras. This man had been the driver of 
a motor omnibus in a country district at 
home. 

" What do you think ?" he writes. " You'll 
never believe ! If I didn't come across old 
Eliza ! Me that drove her for more than three 
years. I knew her at once, poor old girl ! 
knocked about as she was ; I'd have known her 
anywhere, by the shape of her, knowing her in 
and out as I did those years, every bit of her. 
She was a bit the worse for wear, but she was 
fit for a lot yet ; a trifle rattley ; but there's a 
deal of life in her. I can't tell you what I felt 
when I came across her so sudden. There, I 
couldn't help patting her and patting her! 
Poor old Eliza ! To think of her and me 
257 s 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

meeting again like that, both of us doing our 
bit, like !" 

This fourth day of July brings us the third 
of the rain and thunder squalls which have 
followed the great drought. 

Japhet says, relaxing to something approach- 
ing a smile, that he doesn't see why this 
should not end by being a nice garden, and 
that the earth is in very good heart. 

Dear English earth, it has need to be in good 
heart ! Who knows what it may yet have to 
bear and give ? 

The Villino garden wears the war-time 
stamp, at least to its owners' eye ! The 
Signora, who has always hitherto plunged at 
a horticultural list the moment there was a gap 
in her borders that needed filling or a mistake 
that needed repairing, which could not be done 
to her sense of perfection " out of stock," has 
had to teach economy to wait on necessity, 
and ingenuity on both. The result is not 
really gratifying. In all her long experience 
economy has never been gratifying in any 
branch of life. But even if the money were 
there for extravagance — which it isn't — thrift 
258 



A THREE DAYS' CHRONICLE 

has become a positive instead of a negative 
virtue. 

" Thou shalt not spend " is now nearly as 
urgent a commandment as "Thou shalt not 
steal." 

It has set her mind to work more and more, 
however, upon the desirability of permanence 
in the garden. 

In the borders of the terraces round the 
house she has decided to put a foot-deep 
edging of Mrs. Simkins pinks. These are 
adorable in their time of bloom, and the grey- 
green foliage is tidy, and a pretty bit of colour 
all the year round. 

This year the lobelia, scantily planted, and 
the climbing geraniums, pathetically sub- 
divided, will take considerable time before 
forming the show of flower and foliage without 
which the Villino garden is a failure. But it is 
a very good thing for individuals as well as 
nations to be forced to stop and examine their 
manner of life. Hideous as the struggle is — 
dead loss of life and happiness and money — good 
comes out of the evil at many points. Not the 
least beneficial lesson is that which teaches us 
now what an extraordinary amount of money 
259 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

and energy one has frittered away by easy- 
going ways, the amount of items one can put 
down in a household without being the worse 
— rather, indeed, the better ! Even in a little 
household, what waste, what excess, what 
follies of mere show! And if this seems a flat 
contradiction to the remark upon economy 
passed a little while ago, let it be noted that 
conscience and inclination are for ever waging 
war, and that conscience, as is proper, must 
have the last word. Moreover, once the domina- 
tion of conscience is established, the results are, 
in nine cases out of ten, surprisingly bearable. 
Frugality combines very well with refinement, 
and simplicity with dignity. One can be as happy 
with a three-course lunch and a three-course 
supper-dinner as one was with an endless 
array of dishes — those dishes which took so 
much time and material to prepare, and were 
so often barely touched ! The contents dis- 
appeared — thrown away, perhaps, or, what was 
certainly the case in our household, disposed 
of as hors dmivres between the dining-room 
and the pantry. 

"Why does your butler always come in 
chewing ?" asked an observant relative. 
260 



A THREE DAYS' CHRONICLE 

Juvenal, indeed, despite a certain foreign 
disregard for his meal-times, made such a prac- 
tice of snatching morsels in transit that the 
sixteen-year old footman — chief of the many 
grievances which determined our separation — 
who outstayed him, has had to be severely 
reprimanded for making a clean sweep of the 
dishes that caught his young fancy, with a 
special partiality for roast chicken. 

The new regimen — agreeable this hot weather 
— of soup, one cold-meat dish, salad, vegetable, 
sweet, and dessert — supper, in fact, instead of 
dinner — has, besides its intrinsic economy, the 
further advantage of diminishing the expendi- 
ture of kitchen coal to an almost incredible 
degree. 

We who have to render an account here- 
after, even of every idle word, shall we have to 
answer, we wonder, for all that unconscious 
waste which mere convention has induced in 
our homes? How many poor families might 
have been fed from the agglomeration of the 
Signora's years of housekeeping ! She did not 
think. No one thought. It has taken this 
scourge to make us stop in our easy course, 
to make us look into ourselves, into our ways. 
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A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

" What can we do ? What can we do with- 
out ?" These must be now the mottoes written 
large round our house of life ; and, indeed, the 
first includes the second, for it takes consider- 
able energy to abstain. 

"There is none that thinketh in his heart, 
therefore they shall go down alive into hell." 

A very disagreeable text, which comes dis- 
agreeably to the mind this Sunday morning, 
for the famiglia have just come back from 
church, where what is vulgarly called a " hell- 
fire sermon" was delivered by a Welsh 
preacher, who, though a Franciscan, is, one 
of his congregation declared, a revivalist lost 
to his native hills. 

" You ought to go down into hell in spirit 
every day, me brethren," he thundered, " or 
ye'll very likely find yourselves there in the end. 
And what an off-ful thing that 'ud be! And 
there's thousands and thousands of soa-ouls 
there this minute, better than you are !" 

This was neither comforting, nor, we believe, 
theological, for the congregation was small, 
and, on the whole, devout. But no doubt 
there is a type of mind before which it is neces- 
sary to hold up a threat of everlasting punish- 
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A THREE DAYS' CHRONICLE 

ment ; the type of person whom conscription 
alone can move to serve his country before it is 
too late. 

Not the least remarkable result of the German 
brutality is that the great majority of its op- 
ponents find themselves forced back into the 
old simplicity of belief. We can no longer 
afford to deny the existence of demons and 
their power ; and if reason is to keep her 
balance and the soul her ultimate faith in Divine 
justice, acceptance of the doctrine of hell and 
adequate punishment must logically follow. 

A celebrated, if rather medievally minded, 
preacher, whom we once heard lashing the 
vices of the day, cried sarcastically : " You'll 
meet the very best society in hell." 

Holy man, we doubt if he would have made 
the same remark to-day ! The resort in ques- 
tion must have become so overwhelmingly 
German. 

July 8. — The Signora had been a whole year 
at the Villino — perhaps the longest time in all 
her life in one place — but circumstances had 
summoned her family to London for a few 
days, and she could not contemplate their being- 
exposed to Zeppelins without her. 

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A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

The little London house which was our home 
so long, and — to use nursery parlance — the 
nose of which has been so completely put out 
of joint by the Villino, seemed glad to see 
us again. 

How curious is the atmosphere of place ! 
These walls that enfold us, that have seen our 
swift joys and our great sorrows, our merry 
hours and our sad ones, become fond of us, as 
we of them. We are convinced that there is 
a spirit in inanimate things, something that 
gives back, that keeps. Do not old places 
ponder ? Are they not set with memories ? 
Do they not know their own ? Do they not 
withhold themselves and suffer from the 
stranger ? Who has not seen the millionaire 
striving to make himself at home in the great 
house that will have none of him ? Who has 
not felt what an accident he is, how little he 
belongs, how little he or his race will ever 
belong to the stones he has bought, and which 
he will never own ? 

And even a little London house in a street 

may become individual to oneself; and you 

may feel as the Signora did, that it has missed 

you, that through long absence you have been 

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A THREE DAYS' CHRONICLE 

unkind ; that if you finally separate yourself 
from it, it will always want you, and you it. 
And, after all— it is with houses, as with 
people — the link is not necessarily that of the 
blood relationship or long acquaintance. You 
need not have inherited your affinity. You are 
in sympathy, or you are not. The Villino 
claimed us upon our first meeting, but we 
impressed ourselves upon the town dwelling. 
It is still home to us; not the home, a home 

We sat in the high-ceilinged drawing-room, 
with its rather delicate Georgian air, and found 
old familiar emotions waiting for us. And we 
thought of all the kind and dear friends we had 
seen between these walls ; of our gay little 
parties and the music-makers who had made 
music to us ; hours that seemed to belong to 
another life. Here the great Pole, whose magic 
hands have refused themselves to the notes ever 
since his people have been in anguish, made 
the night wonderful with his incomparable art. 
We do not think the small London house can 
ever forget the echoes of that music. It was 
always a feast for it when he, with whose 
friendship we feel ourselves so deeply honoured, 
came to its board. Loki — he was in his puppy- 

265 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

hood then — decorated with the Polish colours, 
would dance towards him on his hind-legs. 
The genius would come in like sunshine, happy 
himself in the immense pleasure his presence 
gave. Certainly this rare being seemed to give 
forth light. 

" When he leaves the room," said a friend of 
his to us, " it is as if the light went out." 

If one had the gift of beholding auras, what a 
halo of fire would one not have seen about that 
wonderful head ? We once said this to him. 

" Do you believe in it ?" we asked. 

He smiled. 4< I think everyone has got his 
flame to cultivate. I think I have cultivated 
mine." 

Most truly, indeed, has he done so ; and not 
only in the divine way of his art, for year by 
year the selflessness and the magnanimity of 
his character seem to deepen and extend ; and 
so, too — inevitable tragedy of years — the sad- 
ness. Impossible for any perfectly noble mind 
not to gather melancholy as life goes on ! — a 
melancholy culminating in his case with the 
burthen of agony which the present sufferings 
of his own race have laid upon his shoulders. 

Therefore these memories of the days when 
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A THREE DAYS' CHRONICLE 

he was as a young god, the days when a cele- 
brated painter could find no truer way of ex- 
pressing him than by flinging on the canvas 
the radiant vision of an Apollo, are poignant 
memories. We are glad that we should have 
them, yet they bring a stab of pain for that lost 
high spirit which life inevitably dashes. 

With us all, the good ship Youth sets forth 
merrily with sails taut and pennons fluttering, 
filling to the wind and breasting the waves ! 
We know that inevitably the storm winds must 
catch her ; that she will be beaten by breakers ; 
drawn out of her course by false currents ; that 
if she become not a derelict, if she does not 
founder with all hands, she must — too often — 
cast much of her treasure overboard, furl her 
white wings, and come creeping into a cold 
harbour. Even those who, like our rare and 
wonderful friend, have gathered glory and 
dignity and power, as they plough a mighty 
course, have passed from under radiant skies 
into the gloom of the storm. A sombre thing, 
the human span, at the best, and most blest 
nowadays. 

What can we say of the fair crait that founders 
almost as soon as launched ? Ah ! the young 

267 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

ghosts in that London drawing-room ! The 
sound of the children's voices yet ringing in 
our ears ! There is " Mustard-Seed," the 
splendid little fair boy, who had been the 
favourite of our Shakesperian revels nine years 
ago — not yet nineteen, not a month a soldier — 
shot through the head on that Flanders field, 
the graveyard of England's choicest ! And the 
little Scotch lad, who used to prance about in 
his black velvet suit, with cheeks that shamed 
the apple — no one knows where he lies to-day; 
only two or three saw him fall. And his graver, 
gentler brother — a prisoner, even as we write 
in the first agony of the grief which has 
befallen him in the loss of his life-companion ! 

And out of a merry group of Irish children, 
irresponsible, high-spirited, noisy, two brothers 
sleep in that alien earth — now for ever English 
— u where their young dust lies," as the poet 
who wrote so prophetically of his own fate has 
beautifully said. And yet another is wounded, 
and another invalided ; and the once merry 
sister, whose gallant husband was left wounded 
on the field and was missing long weeks, still 
mourns him as a prisoner. 

Of the rest of the company, those companions 
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\ 

A THREE DAYS' CHRONICLE 

of our daughter s own unclouded childish days, 
some are widows ; and some can scarce meet 
the morning for apprehension of its news, or 
return to their homes for fear of that orange 
envelope that may lie on the hall table, or sleep 
in the night for listening for the sound of the 
bell. And some are in the Dardenelles, under 
skies of brass, treading on earth of iron, and 
some are in those trenches, deep-dyed and 
battered a hundredfold. Two more brothers — 
the elder twenty and the younger nineteen — 
fell within a month of each other. A few are 
still on English soil, light-heartedly preparing 
for the great fray, straining like hounds at 
the leash, staring with bright, impatient eyes 
towards that goal with its unknown and terrible 
possibilities; cursing the slow flight of time. 
Of these one thinks, perhaps, with a heart more 
tightened than of all the rest ! 

The reaper has come forth to reap out of 
season, and the young corn is mown down in 
the green ear, and all the poppies and the 
pretty flowers go down with it. 

Sitting in rooms which we had not revisited 
since before the war, these are sad thoughts 
that the crowded recollections bring. 

269 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

London itself, however, seemed little changed ; 
even that much - discussed night - darkness 
hardly noticeable. Driving in the daytime we 
instinctively counted, with frowning glance, 
the number of stalwart young men out of 
uniform, and wondered how any girl could 
walk with them, much less smile upon them. 
And our eyes followed the soldiers with pride 
as they marched by, singing popular catches 
to inspire themselves in default of the band 
which the stern necessities of this war forbid. 
What fine fellows they are — so well set up, 
looking out with such steady vision upon the 
future which they have chosen ! And the lilt 
of the merry tune, with what a deep note of 
pathos it strikes upon the ear ! 

Of course there are a great many soldiers 
about London, yet no more than in Jubilee 
time, and there is no greater excitement among 
them, and a good deal less among those who 
watch them pass, than in the days when it was 
all pomp and circumstance, and no warfare. 

London does not carry the stamp of war 
about her, but we carry it each one of us in our 
hearts. That is why we sicken from the music- 
hall posters ; why wrath and grief mingle in 

270 



A THREE DAYS' CHRONICLE 

our minds at the sight of that bold-eyed com- 
munity with its whitened face, its vulgar ex- 
aggeration of attire, and its unchecked and 
unashamed hunting of its prey; a prey some- 
times visibly unwilling, sometimes pathetically, 
innocently flattered ! 

The Zeppelin menace has created no sense 
of apprehension in the town. The first night 
of our arrival we conscientiously prepared 
amateur respirators for ourselves and such 
of the famiglia as accompanied us. Pads of 
cotton-wool, soaked in a strong solution of 
soda, were placed within easy reach of the bed- 
side. The next night we said "Bother!" and 
the third night we forgot all about it. Though 
the Signora, lying awake, had occasionally a 
half-amused speculation whether the throbbing 
passage of some more than usually loud trac- 
tion-engine, or the distant back-firing of a 
belated taxicab, might not be the bark of the 
real wolf at last ! 

Our little white-haired housemaid, generally 
left alone to mind the London house, possesses 
this philosophic indifference. She made her- 
self a respirator. We doubt whether she ever 
thinks of placing it handy. We believe she 

271 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

shares the view of the old nurse of a friend of 
ours into whose garden a bomb really and truly 
did drop during the recent raid on Southend. 

" Frightened, miss ? Lord bless you, no ! I 
knew it was only them Germans !" 

Nevertheless, though London is neither 
alarmed nor depressed, we set our faces to- 
wards the Villino again with a sense of relief. 
These days it is better to be in one's own 
place; and in London we feel only visitors 
now. Yet, strangely, the country is far more 
full of the war than the town. 

Beginning at Wimbledon, we meet motor- 
cars filled to overflowing with bandaged, bronze- 
faced young men, who smile and wave their 
hands as we whizz by. Dear lads ! Some 
from that greater England beyond the sea, 
more closely our brothers now than ever 
before, with ties cemented by the shedding ot 
blood. Bint -Brudersch aft, indeed, you have 
pledged with us : a Teutonic rite put into 
practice after a fashion our enemies thought 
out of the range of possibility. 

And presently we come to the camps. Here, 
where the pine-woods solitary marched, where 
the heather was wont to spread, crimsoning 
272 



A THREE DAYS' CHRONICLE 

and purpling to the line of blue distance — a 
wonderful vision of wild scenery — here is a 
brown waste, peopled with a new town. Rows 
and rows of wooden huts run in parallel lines. 
Where the trees stood you cannot even guess ; 
but once and again there is the smell of the 
raw wood, and you see a giant lying lopped of 
his branches. And the whole place swarms in 
activity. We pass hundreds of ammunition and 
gun carriages — the two-wheeled carts for the 
new howitzers — some already with the guns in 
place ; long sheds where half a dozen smiths 
are busy shoeing, with groups of patient horses, 
shoulder by shoulder, waiting outside; we hear 
the clank of iron upon iron from within; we 
catch the vision of red fire upon the sleek flank 
and the brawny arms wielding the hammer. 
Horses everywhere, it seems — lines of them, 
picketed ; horsemen coming and going : de- 
tachments riding up and down among the 
thickest dust that you have ever imagined ; 
and waggons lumbering, some charged with 
fodder, some, as we pass, with loaves fresh 
from the baking. And now a traction-engine, 
filling the air with noise and smoke, driven by 
two grimy Tommies who shout at each other 

273 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

as they throb and bumble along, has to be 
dodged and left behind. 

This is an artillery camp — a marvellous place 
which gives one a more vivid impression of 
England's strength, of England's new army, 
than any words can describe. These splendid, 
happy, vigorous, busy men ; these rows of 
howitzer and ammunition carts ; these thousands 
of sleek, lively horses; this untiring, determined 
movement of work and preparation ... all for 
the Dardanelles, we hear. 

We get out of the dust and the noise and the 
gigantic stir, and along the green roads again ; 
and then into another camp. A curious still- 
ness here : the myriad huts are all shut up, the 
sheds empty, even the new shops seemingly 
untenanted; only here and there stands a stray 
khaki figure to emphasize the loneliness. They 
left for the front the day before yesterday. 
To-morrow twenty thousand new men are 
expected, like a new swarm of bees, to take 
their place in the vacated hives. 



Home again in the Villino, with all the fur 
babies washed and waiting for us. Rather a 
274 



A THREE DAYS' CHRONICLE 

silent group of dogs, a little offended because 
we went away. Loki, who generally screams 
with rapture, has certainly a reservation in the 
ecstasy of his greetings ; but Mimosa clings to 
us with two little paws, like a child hugging a 
recovered treasure, and offers kisses, of which 
she is not generally prodigal. Plain Eliza is 
shy. She has grown perceptibly in three days. 

The garden is full of sweet scents. The 
dawn, the coronation, and the crimson ramblers 
are bursting into lovely bloom beside the blue 
of the delphiniums. 

There was always a special kind of joy in 
the old days about home-coming to the Villino. 
We used to go from room to room, taking stock 
of the dear, queer little place ; greeting the 
serene, smiling Madonnas ; the aloof angels 
folded into their prayers ; pagan, pondering 
Polyhymnia in her corner of the drawing-room, 
brooding upon the glory of times that will 
never be again. ... It is all just as it used 
to be : bowery, without and within, as usual. 

Everything is scrubbed to the last point of 
daisy freshness and polished to spicy gloss 
against the Padrona's return, and smiling 
damsels await compliments on the stairs. 

275 



A LITTLE HOUSE IN WAR TIME 

Other years, as we say, these were moments 
of unalloyed light-heartedness. It was always 
unexpectedly nicer than we had imagined. 

" Isn't it dearer than ever ?" we would say, 
then, to each other. " Don't you love it ? 
Aren't we happy here ?" 

This year it is another cry that rises to our 
lips. 

"Oh, how happy we might be, if only " 



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